Indian National Army trials
It included Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Kailash Nath Katju and others.
Historian Mithi Mukherjee has called the event of the trial "a key moment in the elaboration of an anticolonial critique of international law in India.
"[3] As it was an army trial, Lt. Col. Horilal Varma Bar At Law & the then-Prime Minister of the Rampur State, along with Tej Bahadur Sapru, served as the lawyers for the defendants.
Japan, as well as South East Asia, was a major refuge for Indian nationalists living in exile before the start of World War II who formed strong proponents of militant nationalism and also influenced Japanese policy significantly.
The conditions in the Japanese prisoner of war camps were notorious and led to some of the troops deserting, when offered release by their captors, and forming a nationalist army.
From these deserters, the First Indian National Army was formed under Mohan Singh Deb and received considerable Japanese aid and support.
In Nov 1943, Azad Hind had been given a limited form of governmental jurisdiction over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which had been captured by the Japanese navy early on in the war.
At the conclusion of the Second World War, the government of British India brought some of the captured INA soldiers to trial on treason charges.
[5] However, the number of INA troops captured by Commonwealth forces by the end of the Burma Campaign made it necessary to take a selective policy to charge those accused of the worst allegations.
The committee declared the formation of the Congress' defence team for the INA and included Jawaharlal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Bhulabhai Desai, R.B.
[1] The first trial, that of Shah Nawaz Khan, Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon and Prem Sahgal was held between November and December 1945 against the backdrop of general elections in India with the Attorney General of India, Noshirwan P. Engineer as the chief prosecutor and two dozen counsel for the defence, led by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and fronted by Lt. Col Horilal Varma Bar At Law[6] All three of the accused were charged with "waging war against the king contrary to section 121 of the Indian Penal Code".
Shangara Singh was awarded the Sardar-e-Jung, the second-highest decoration bestowed by Azad Hind government for valour in combat, and the Vir-e-Hind medal.
Though Captain Allah Yar Khan and few of his coompanions were listed as POWs but in fact they escaped into jungle surrounding Singapore, fearing torture at the hands of the Japanese soldiers.
[7] Beyond the concurrent campaigns of noncooperation and nonviolent protest, this spread to include mutinies and wavering support within the British Indian Army.
This sentence, however, was never carried out, as the immense public pressure of the demonstrations forced Claude Auchinleck, Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, to release all three defendants.
The sound coming from the Lal Red Fort says -Dhillion, Sehgal, Shahnawaz; May the three live long)[8] During the trial, mutiny broke out in the Royal Indian Navy, incorporating ships and shore establishments of the RIN throughout India from Karachi to Bombay and from Vizag to Calcutta.
[9] Lord Louis Mountbatten, the head of Southeast Asia Command, ordered the INA memorial to its fallen soldiers to be demolished when Singapore was recaptured in 1945.
Newspapers reported at the time of the trials that some of the INA soldiers held at Red Fort had been executed,[14] which only succeeded in causing further protests.
