Bathinda: Raising voice for one freedom fighter Asking another country to name an intersection after itself is not an easy task, but a lawyer in Pakistan is continuously fighting a legal battle for it. Bhagat Singh For more than a decade. Advocate Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi He had to face attacks from fundamentalists, but regardless of this he continues his fight.
Qureshi first turned to the legal route involving Bhagat Singh in May 2013 when he filed a petition along with his father, lawyer Abdul Rashid Qureshi. Lahore High Court are demanding the reopening of Lahore The 1928 conspiracy case related to the murder of the then Assistant Superintendent of Police John P. Saunders, with states that the case did not meet the requirements of justice because due process was not followed. The death sentences of Bhagat Singh, Shivram Rajguru and Sukhdev Thapar were handed down without hearing the testimony of approximately 450 witnesses or giving the defendants a chance to appeal. He had demanded that the three be declared innocent because Bhagat Singh’s name was not even there in the FIR registered at Anarkali Bazar police station on December 17, 1928 for the murder of Saunders.
The last hearing in the case was held on 3 February 2016, when Abdul Rashid Qureshi had demanded the formation of a Constitution bench with more than 3 judges, because the death sentence of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev was given by a three-member bench only. judge. He was sentenced to death on October 7, 1930, and hanged in Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931.
Concerned over the unnecessary delay in considering the petition to prove the innocence of the martyrs, Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi filed an application for speedy determination of the case, including an application for a fair trial, in March this year. Pakistan Supreme Court had ruled on March 6 that former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged 44 years ago on April 4, 1979, in a murder case, did not receive a fair trial.
Imtiaz had earlier filed another petition in the Lahore High Court under Article 199 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, 1973 on February 21, 2018, seeking direction to the Punjab provincial government to change the name of an intersection Went.’Shadman Chowk‘Bhagat Singh Chowk in the center of Lahore and the Chief Secretary of Punjab, Deputy Commissioner Lahore and Lord Mayor Lahore were made the defendants. Shadman Square was then part of the Lahore Central Jail, where Bhagat Singh was hanged along with Rajguru and Sukhdev on March 23, 1931.
Disposing of the petition on September 5, 2018, the court of Justice Shahid Jamil Khan had directed the Lord Mayor of Lahore to take a decision as soon as possible on the petition seeking to name Shadman intersection after Bhagat Singh.
When no progress was made on the issue even after more than 5 years, Imtiaz Qureshi filed a complaint on March 1, 2024 under Article 204 of the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973 read with Section ¾ of the Contempt of Courts Act, 2003 Contempt petition filed. The court of Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza of Lahore High Court on March 4 approved the contempt petition to name the intersection as Bhagat Singh Chowk.
Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza adjourned the case to November 8, giving the last chance to the respondents to act on the contempt plea against not naming Shadman Chowk in the provincial capital after freedom fighter Bhagat Singh on September 13, 2024. Did it.
Before launching the legal battle, during which he received threats from fundamentalist elements, Imtiaz Rashid Qureshi had formed the Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation with father Abdul Rashid in 2010.
“My elder brother, who was an Inspector in the Punjab Police, used to watch the Bhagat Singh related days during his college days and taking inspiration from this, I decided to carry forward the memories of Bhagat Singh and founded the Foundation by bringing together like-minded people. Made. “, 53-year-old Qureshi said while speaking to TOI over phone from Lahore, recalling his fondness about Bhagat Singh.
“Bhagat Singh was born on September 28, 1907 in Chak 105 Bange village near Faisalabad, studied in Lahore and was even hanged in Lahore Central Jail. Bhagat Singh is not the only martyr of India, rather he is the hero of the subcontinent and cannot be limited to only Hindus or Sikhs, but Muslims also see him as a hero fighting against the imperialist forces. Even Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had praised Bhagat Singh in the National Assembly on September 4 and 12, 1929”, Imtiaz said on the reason behind running the cases related to Bhagat Singh in Pakistan without any assistance. Explaining said. “Taking cases to their logical conclusion is now my sole mission in life,” he says.
Similar efforts had been made in Lahore long before Qureshi, where activists including Deep Saeeda, founder of the Center for Peace and Secular Studies, had called for the intersection to be named after Bhagat Singh. Earlier also in 2012, Lahore authorities had agreed to rename the Chowk after Bhagat Singh after the ‘Dilkash Lahore Committee’ constituted for rehabilitation/restoration of historical buildings comprising judicial officers, academicians, eminent citizens. But Tehreek Hurmat-e-Rasool, an organization affiliated with Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), approached the Lahore High Court, which stayed the issuance of the notification and only after that in 2018, Imtiaz took up the matter again.
While disposing of Imtiaz Qureshi’s writ petition number 168074/2018, Justice Shahid Jameel Khan, in his order dated September 5, 2018, had mentioned that the same complaint had been expressed through a writ petition in 2012.
