Cooper’s account

Frederic Cooper, deputy commissioner of Umritsur (Amritsar) in 1857, narrates the execution of 282 soldiers in his self-congratulatory book The Crisis in the Punjab: From the 10th of May Until the Fall of Delhi. It was August 1, 1857, when the execution had taken place. The 26th Native Infantry had ‘mutinied’ and some of them had reached Ajnala in Amritsar. 

Advertisement

He writes: “Ten-by-ten the sepoys were called forth. Their names having been taken down in succession, they were pinioned… and marched to execution; a firing-party being in readiness. 

“About 150 having been thus executed, one of the executioners swooned away (he was the oldest of the firing-party), and a little respite was allowed… then proceeding, the number had arrived at 237; when the district officer was informed that the remainder refused to come out of the bastion, where they had been imprisoned temporarily. 

“Expecting a rush and resistance, preparations were made against escape; but little expectation was entertained of the real and awful fate which had fallen on the remainder of the mutineers: they had anticipated, by a few short hours, their doom. The doors were opened, and, behold! They were nearly all dead! 

“Forty-five bodies, dead from fright, exhaustion, fatigue, heat, and partial suffocation, were dragged into light, and consigned, in common with all the other bodies, into one common pit, by the hands of the village sweepers. 

In his proclamation on the subject, the chief commissioner wrote: “It is fervently hoped that the signal and summary punishment which has overtaken this corps may deter all others from committing the atrocious and wanton murders which have disgraced the name of the Bengal sepoy.” 

— Bhartesh Singh Thakur