In Virendra’s recollection, published in a 2025 excerpt from Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged at Lahore Central Jail on the evening of March 23, 1931—earlier than the prisoners expected. The account describes the three walking to the gallows together, shouting “Inquilab Zindabad,” and their bodies being secretly taken away for hurried cremation. It is a later-published first-person account, not an independently verified execution record.
What Virendra’s account says happened at Lahore Central Jail
The account appears in a Scroll excerpt published February 24, 2025, from Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper by Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan. It is attributed to journalist Virendra, who says he was in Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931. He opens: “The day Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, and Sukhdev were hanged it was my fortune or misfortune to be in the same jail.”
Virendra writes that the prisoners expected the execution the following morning. He says they learned it would happen that evening through Barkat, a jail barber. Virendra asked Barkat to bring back a keepsake; according to the account, Barkat returned with a fountain pen and a comb on which Bhagat Singh had carved his name.
The execution was brought forward to that evening
Virendra says warder Chattar Singh locked the prisoners in early and told them the hanging would take place at 7 pm. He recounts hearing Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev call out “Inquilab Zindabad” as they walked toward the gallows.
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The excerpt also attributes remarks about the men’s courage to Chattar Singh, and describes Bhagat Singh responding when urged to remember Wahe Guru. It says he was reading The Life of Lenin shortly before being called out. These exchanges are reported dialogue in Virendra’s account; the excerpt does not establish them as independently corroborated quotations.
The request for a firing squad and the reported time of death
Virendra’s narrative says the three men asked to be executed by firing squad because they regarded themselves as prisoners of war, but their request was rejected. The account gives 7:33 pm as the time of death and says Bhagat Singh was 23 years, five months and 26 days old. Those precise details are figures reported in the recollection, not verified here against a contemporaneous official record.
What the account says happened to the bodies
Virendra’s account says the bodies were removed secretly, taken toward the Sutlej near Ferozepur and cremated hurriedly. It also recounts that Bhagat Singh’s father and family were unable to meet him at the jail before the execution.
The narrative does not make every scene a direct observation by Virendra. Some details reach him through Barkat, while the account also attributes information about the execution to Chattar Singh. The passage is best read as a named recollection that combines what Virendra says he experienced with information he says others provided.
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Who was Virendra, and how did he learn what happened?
The excerpt identifies Virendra as a journalist and presents the account in the first person, but the material available here does not provide a fuller biography or establish the surviving account’s manuscript history. His presence in the same jail gave him proximity to the events; the barber’s keepsake and the warder’s reported information are part of how the narrative describes what he learned.
The recollection was published decades later as an excerpt from a book. The account’s vivid chronology and reported dialogue should therefore be attributed to Virendra rather than treated as a transcript or a substitute for prison registers, an execution certificate or other contemporaneous documentation.
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Where to read the account
Scroll published the excerpt, titled “End of a glorious chapter”: “End of a glorious chapter”: A journalist’s first-person account of Bhagat Singh’s execution, on February 24, 2025.
The account is included in Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper by Chander Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan. Google Books lists the HarperCollins book as published in 2025, 360 pages, and includes a contents entry titled “A Day of Hangings An Eyewitness Account.” View the book’s Google Books record.
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