Move to rechristen Lahore rotary after Bhagat Singh nixed

A plan to rename Shadman Chowk in Lahore city after Shaheed Bhagat Singh and install his statue there has been scrapped in light of a report by a retired military official, the district government of the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province has told the high court here.

In a reply submitted to the Lahore high court on Friday by assistant advocate general Asghar Leghari, serious allegations were levelled against the freedom fighter.

“A proposed plan of the city district government Lahore to name Shadman Chowk after Bhagat Singh and place his statue there has been scrapped in light of an observation submitted by Commodore Tariq Majeed (retd),” the Metropolitan Corporation of Lahore said in a reply to a contempt petition filed by Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation Pakistan chairman Imtiaz Rasheed Qureshi in the HC.

It said Majeed, engaged by the government in a committee to rename the rotary after the freedom fighter, in his observations claimed he “was not a revolutionary but a criminal, in today’s terms he was a terrorist, he killed a British police officer, and for this crime, he was hanged along with two accomplices”.

Majeed recommended against renaming the rotary as Bhagat Singh Chowk or installing his statue there.

The report further said the martyr was influenced by “religious leaders hostile to Muslims and the NGO — Bhagat Singh Foundation — is working against Islamic ideology and Pakistani culture, (and) it should be banned”. “Don’t the officials of the foundation, who call themselves Muslims, know it is not acceptable to name a place after an atheist in Pakistan and that Islam prohibits human statues?” it asked. In response to the report, Qureshi told PTI on Sunday Bhagat Singh was declared a great revolutionary, freedom fighter and martyr undisputedly.

“I will send a legal notice to retired Commodore Majeed for levelling serious allegations against the Bhagat Singh Foundation and contest his stance on Bhagat Singh,” he said.

Qureshi has made the district government, Lahore deputy commissioner, Punjab chief secretary and district government’s administrator parties in a contempt petition. In the plea, it was said HC Justice Shahid Jamil Khan had issued instructions to the authorities concerned on September 5, 2018, to take steps to name the rotary after Bhagat Singh, but the court order had not been implemented yet.

HC Justice Shams Mehmood Mirza adjourned the hearing of the contempt plea until January 17, 2025, due to non-availability of petitioner’s counsel.

The freedom fighter was hanged along with Rajguru and Sukhdev by the British on March 23, 1931, at the age of 23 in Lahore, after being tried for hatching a conspiracy against the colonial government and allegedly killing British police officer John P Saunders.