Nearly 90 year after the Shaheed-e-Aazam Bhagat Singh had used .32-mm Colt automatic pistol to kill the British assistant superintendent of police, John Saunders, in 1928, it will be displayed at the Hussainiwala border museum in Ferozepur district.
With the Border Security Force (BSF) till now in its Indore unit, the pistol is finally back in Punjab and will be put on display for the public at Hussainiwala museum, that houses a memorial to the freedom fighter trio of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, where they were cremated.
“Arun Kumar Tambe, a Deputy Inspector General of the BSF unit of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, from where the pistol was recently retrieved, told the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday that the orders were issued for the move on April 25 by the BSF headquarters,” said advocate HC Arora who had filed a public interest litigation (PIl) in the matter.
The orders directed immediate transfer of the pistol from BSF Museum, Indore, to BSF Museum at Hussaini Wala, where memorial of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev is constructed, and to throw it open to public for paying their tributes to martyrs, said Arora.
Arora, in his petition, has sought retrieval of the pistol from the BSF museum in Indore for displaying it at a museum in Khatkar Kalan - the native village of Bhagat Singh in Shaheed Bhagat Singh (SBS) Nagar district, formerly Nawanshahr.
All other articles related to Bhagat Singh are displayed there.
Arora maintained that the pistol was requisitioned by the BSF from Punjab Police Academy, Phillaur, in October, 1969, where it was lying since 1944 after it was received from lahore SSP.
In November 2016, the pistol was discovered by media as lying in the BSF museum at Indore. As per the records, the last bullet fired from the .32-mm Colt automatic pistol killed British assistant superintendent of police John Saunders on December 17, 1928.
