A rare reunion: Descendants pay tributes to freedom fighters

Bathinda: For 75-year-old Bharti Bagchi, bowing before the memorial of her freedom fighter father Batukeshwar Dutt also known as B K Dutt, a close friend of Bhagat Singh, was no less than a pilgrimage. Paying floral tributes to her father on his 59th death anniversary at Hussainiwala National Martyrs Memorial, where Dutt was cremated, Bharti remembers his last wish — that his mortal remains be consigned to flames just near the place where Bhagat, Rajguru and Sukhdev were cremated on March 23, 1931, on the banks of Satluj.
After his death, Dutt’s mortal remains were brought from Delhi to Hussainiwala on July 21, 1965.Joined by the descendants of Bhagat, Rajguru and Sukhdev at the memorial, Bharti said for 17 years after Independence, her father chose to live in obscurity at Patna in Bihar.
“In late 1964, when he was seriously ill and was brought to Delhi, authorities came to know about him as the then Union home minister, Gulzarilal Nanda, visited him in AIIMS. He had a last wish: to rest in peace along their memorial. Going by it, he was cremated at Hussainiwala. Though I visited Hussainiwala on March 23, it is for first time that I along with descendants of other freedom fighters have visited the memorial on July 20 to observe his death anniversary. I wanted to observe his death anniversary before breathing my last,” she said.
Batukeshwar along with Bhagat had hurled a bomb in the central legislative assembly of Delhi on April 8, 1929, and was sentenced to life imprisonment which he completed at cellular jail in Andaman.
The descendants later went to Ferozepur’s Toori Bazar. Touching the walls in the upper rooms of the rundown building, they transcended to 1928-29, when freedom fighter Dr Gaya Prasad had rented the building to make it a hideout for freedom fighters for nearly six months. It is here Bhagat Singh is learnt to have shorn his hair to change the way he looked.
“These were touching moments, feeling what our forefathers did before Independence,” said Dr Prasad’s son, Kranti Kumar Katyar.
“I felt sentimental and proud to visit the place and felt without it was incomplete. This moment will remain etched in my mind,” he added.
Bhagat Singh’s nephew Kiranjit Sandhu said he felt life had given me a lot. “I had visited places associated with him and his comrades, even his birthplace at Chank Number 105 in Pakistan’s Faislabad district, but never the hideout. Today, this wish came true and that too on the death anniversary of BK Dutt,” he said.
Delhi based Shaheed-e-Azam Society president Pradeep Deswal facilitated the visit of the family members of freedom fighters by making them assemble at Delhi to visit Punjab. Rajguru’s grandnephew Satyasheel Rajguru and Sukhdev’s grandnephew Anuj Thapar reached the spot with their family members.