On March 23, 1931, after Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were hanged to death at the Lahore jail , their bodies were smuggled out from Lahore jail to Kasur and consigned to the flames but the pyres were put out and the charred remains were thrown into the adjacent Sutlej river.

On January 12, 1934, after a near lifeless Masterda Surya Sen was hanged to death, his body was put inside a sealed steel box that was thrown into the Bay of Bengal.

It was a conscious decision by the British Indian government to not hand over the bodies of revolutionaries hanged to death to their families. Instead, the mortal remains were buried in unmarked graves, thrown into rivers or sea in coffins or burnt surreptitiously. But what triggered this particularly sadistic behaviour by India’s colonial rulers? We look at the story behind...

Story: Trinanjan Chakraborty
Video Producer/Editor: Shohini Bose