Ashfaqulla Khan

Kakori conspiracy

Ashfaqulla Khan, a resident of Shahjahanpur in the United Provinces, was a close associate and, by several accounts, a particularly trusted lieutenant of Ram Prasad Bismil within the Hindustan Republican Association, a revolutionary organisation formed in the early 1920s that sought to overthrow British rule through armed action, including the acquisition of weapons and the funding of its activities partly through robberies targeting government resources. On 9 August 1925, a group of HRA members including Khan and Bismil stopped a passenger train carrying government treasury money near the village of Kakori, not far from Lucknow, pulled the emergency chain, and looted the cash box being transported in the guard's compartment, an action that became known as the Kakori conspiracy or Kakori train robbery. The colonial government treated the robbery as a serious act of sedition rather than ordinary crime and responded with a large-scale investigation and crackdown, arresting most of the organisation's known leadership and membership across the United Provinces in the following months.

Capture and execution

Khan evaded arrest for several months after the robbery, travelling under disguise, reportedly at one point posing as a Pathan, to different parts of northern India including Bihar and Delhi in an effort to reach Afghanistan. He was eventually betrayed by an acquaintance and arrested in Delhi in late 1926 or early 1927. He was tried along with the other surviving HRA members in the Kakori conspiracy case, convicted, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging on 19 December 1927 at Faizabad Central Jail, the same day Ram Prasad Bismil and Roshan Singh were hanged at Gorakhpur and Naini jails respectively, and two days after Rajendra Nath Lahiri had already been executed ahead of schedule at Gonda. Khan, one of the few Muslim members of the largely Hindu-led HRA leadership, is remembered alongside his three Kakori co-accused as among the best-known armed revolutionaries of the 1920s phase of the independence movement, and the close, cross-communal friendship between Khan and Bismil is frequently cited in later accounts of the period.