Bhagat Singh’s kin allege snooping

Sarbjit Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 12

Asserting that their family also remained under surveillance for long after the Independence, martyr Bhagat Singh’s nephew Abhay Singh Sandhu here today urged the Union Government to make all classified files and other documents regarding Indian revolutionaries and their families public.

“As far as I know, intelligence agencies snooped on my father Kulbir Singh, younger brother of Bhagat Singh, till his death in August 1983,” said Sandhu.

Earlier this week, a controversy broke out across the country following a revelation that late Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru and successive governments at the Centre kept snooping on the family members of Subhas Chandra Bose, whose kin have also sought de-classification of all files relating to him.

Speaking to The Tribune, Sandhu said in case the Union Government failed to declassify the files pertaining to revolutionaries and their families and put the same in the public domain, he would take a legal recourse or explore other available options to get it done.

“After consulting legal experts, I have decided to first approach the Union Government through an RTI plea to seek various files and other documents. In case, the Union Government refuses to do so, I will approach the High Court or the Supreme Court to get those documents,” Sandhu said.

Narrating some incidents, he said his father was elected an MLA as a nominee of the Janasangh, which was later rechristened as the BJP, from Ferozepur in 1962. Immediately after that, intelligence agencies started shadowing him and they did so till his death in 1983.

He said the Congress put a lot of pressure on his father to join it, but he did not agree to that. He said the intelligence agencies used to plant domestic servants at their home. “Gathering information on my father and other relatives of revolutionaries was further increased when they held a meeting in New Delhi to start a campaign against Nehru after a big setback in the war against China in 1962,” he said.

“Before that meeting, my father and his associates had already started a campaign on the corruption issue against the Nehru government,” he claimed.

“When my father used to travel to Delhi, intelligence officials used to clandestinely travel with him,” he said. They used to inform telegraphically their higher authorities about the train etc. in which Kulbir Singh travelled to Delhi.

“Once, my father came to know that information about the train boarded by him to travel to Delhi had been passed on to the intelligence authorities. Instead of traveling to Delhi, my father got off the train at some other place. An intelligence official once requested him that he should keep them informed about his travel plans so that he could save his job,” said Sandhu.

In 1983, an intelligence official was planted at our home in the garb of a research scholar. He came to my father and told that he was doing a research on Bhagat Singh and his family.

“He stayed with our family for six months, did no scholarly work but kept a close watch on the people who came to meet my father,” he said. He disappeared immediately after the death of my father, Sandhu added. “A person in the garb of a sadhu camped outside my aunt Amar Kaur’s house at Dialpura village, near Kartarpur in Jalandhar district, for several months,” he said.

Prof Jagmohan Singh, son of Bhagat Singh’s sister, said he was witness to various encounters of Kulbir Singh with intelligence officials. He said it was not clear who put it in Nehru's mind that there was a threat to his life from revolutionaries. He said instead of politically exploiting the issues related to snooping, the Centre should put all documents related to Bose, Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries in the public domain.