Pak body wants Bhagat Singh’s statue installed in Lahore

Sanjiv Kumar Bakshi

Hoshiarpur, January 17

The Shaheed Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation, Pakistan, has demanded that Shadman Chowk in Lahore, where Bhagat Singh was hanged on March 23, 1931, should be named after the martyr and his statue should also be installed there.

It said the move would serve as a source of inspiration for future generations.

The foundation’s chairman, Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi, told The Tribune over phone that the demand letters had been handed over to the Mayor and Chief Commissioner of Lahore on Tuesday. He said Shaheed Bhagat Singh was a great revolutionary of the subcontinent and the whole world knew his name. He said even the Founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah had praised him by saying that no one as brave as Bhagat Singh was ever born in the subcontinent.

Qureshi said the foundation had requested the Pakistan Government that Shaheed Bhagat Singh should be rewarded with Pakistan’s highest gallantry award, Nishan-a-Haider. The foundation has put forth its demands saying that Pakistan would be held in high esteem in the world if martyrs were given full respect in the country without any discrimination on religious grounds.

Qureshi, whose foundation is also contesting in Lahore High Court the reopening of the Bhagat Singh trial case, said, “We are completely hopeful that soon, it will be proven in the Pakistani court that the decision of the British Government to hang Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru was wrong.”

Qureshi said, “Bhagat Singh is as much of Pakistan as much as he is of India. He was born in present-day Pakistan, so he is the hero of India and the son of Pakistan.”