Thread by @LakshmiAgain

Sadashiv Rao Malkapurkar (photo from a biopic on Chandrashekhar #Azad). He was the ONLY person Azad ever introduced to his parents. He took care of Azad's mother after his release like a son. She died with her head in his lap on March 21, 1953. He performed her last rites.

Master Rudranarayan who helped Azad go underground in #Jhansi after #Kakori robbery on August 9, 1925. He wanted to create a memorial for Azad & his mother in #Bhabra in March 1953, after Jagrani Devi died. Nehru threatened him with jail but he defied Nehru & did it anyway!

Bhagwas Das Mahour, one of the three muskateers (Vishwanath Vaisampayan, Sadashiv Rao Malkapurkar and himself). After conviction and sentence for his role in the #Bhusawal Bomb case, he married Master Rudranarayan's daughter and helped Malkapurkar take care of Azad's mother.

Mahour attempted to assassinate Phanindranath Ghosh for turning approver in #Lahore conspiracy case & giving evidence against Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev & Rajguru but failed. Ghosh was ultimately assassinated in Nov, 1932 by Baikunthnath Shukla outside his home in broad daylight.

Shukla (pictured above) was hanged on his birthday (May 15, 1934) in Gaya Jail. He left behind a teenaged wife, Radhika, who lived a long and hard life, in utter penury and forgotten. She died in 2004, bitter and childless.

Shaligram #Shukla was an 18-yr-old student at #DAV College, #Kanpur, tasked with recruiting young fellows for the #HSRA which he did with great skill along with friend and senior, Gajanand Potdar. Azad was very affectionate towards him & personally trained him to use firearms.

On Dec 1, 1930, at 4 am, the police raided the hostel looking for Potdar. Shukla, who was on his way to an early morning firearms training session with Azad and Surendranath Pandey, turned back to take a stand to defend Potdar and was killed in the resulting gun battle. +

His unexpected death devastated Azad who was already depressed over the death sentence passed on Singh, Sukhdev & Rajguru just 2 months prior. Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi requested Azad's childhood tutor Manohar #Tripathi to personally come & comfort Azad +

because Azad was suffering deeply over the accummulated losses of the past few weeks. Tripathi visited Azad and pleaded with him to return to Bhabra and his parents who were also suffering in their own way. Azad refused. It was the last time his teacher ever saw him+

Perhaps the final nail in Azad's coffin was the unexpected arrest of his closest friend and personal confidante, Vishwanath Vaisampayan on Feb 11, 1931 at Kanpur. Vaishampayan was lured into a police trap by their former associates, Satguru Dayal Awasthi and Veerabhadra Tiwari+

Both men had personal grudges against Azad. Azad had intervened in Awasthi's illicit affair with a female HSRA worker, Khoki & had forced her to move out from her sister Maya's house, into the custody of Sushila Didi after Maya complained to Azad about Khoki's & Awasthi's affair+

Unbeknownst to both Azad and Didi, Khoki then developed an affair with the married and crooked Veerabhadra Tiwari, who was a Central Comittee Member of the HSRA. Contrary to rules and ethics, Tiwari leaked Azad's intentions to assassinate Yashpal to Yashpal himself+

This caused internal friction in the party & caused it to split into several provincial factions. Azad then dissolved the Central Committee on Sept 4, 1930 & then resolved to assassinate Veerabhadra Tiwari to revenge the breakup of his organization. +

To this end, he enlisted Yashpal (who begged Azad's forgiveness) and Khoki. Unfortunately, one or both betrayed Azad and tipped Tiwari off as a result of which he escaped Azad's multiple assasination attempts on his life. Both Awasthi & Tiwari therefore wanted revenge on Azad+

That came to fruition when both men lured the unsuspecting Vaishampayan to Awasthi's home & informed the police about his presence there. Vaishampayan was arrested on Feb 11, 1931. This completely isolated Azad. All his trusted comrades were either in prison or dead by then+

A few days later, Azad, all alone and worried about the hangings of Bhagat, Sukhdev and Rajguru just a month later went to meet Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi who had been imprisoned in Allahabd to ask for his advice on how to save his 3 friends from the hangman's noose.

On Feb 24 1931, Vidyarthi advised him to meet Jawaharlal Nehru (then in Allahabad) to ask him to speak to Gandhi on behalf of his comrades & urge Viceroy Irwin to commute the hangings to life sentences. Azad took his advice &visited Nehru at Anand Bhavan at 10 am on Feb 27, 1931+

We all know how it ended. What we still - purportedly - do not know is who called the police and informed them about Azad's whereabouts that fateful day, just 30 minutes after he left Nehru's house to meet Sukhdev Raj at Alfred Park. However, Nehru's later hostility towards HSRA+

His attempts to put PHYSICAL distance between himself & Azad (he left for Delhi around noon that day, immediately after Azad's encounter), his claims in his 1937 autobiography that Azad was a stranger (despite having assisted his father Motilal on the defence of Kakori accused) +

His denying he had ever met Azad before although his father had covertly supported Azad and HSRA financially for YEARS and despite there being eyewitness accounts to Jawaharlal acknowledging Azad at the funeral procession of Jatinadranath Das just a couple of years previously+

his aggressive demonization of the HSRA bravehearts as "fascists", his threats to Master Rudranarayan over his plans to construct a memorial for Azad & his mother in their hometown in 1953 & most damningly, his wife, Kamala, attempting to claim Azad's dead body as a "relative"+

someone who Nehru claimed was a "total stranger" are all suspicious. We will never know with certainty as to the identity of who the informant was but the leading suspects are Yashpal and Nehru Jr.

Azad's last journey was an utter disaster. +

Congress organized a talk by its netas which was attended by a large and unruly crowd. Azad's ashes were on the stage in a large urn. After Purushottam Das Tandon delivered his speech, the wife of Sachindranath Sanyal began to rant against the British, working the huge crowd up+

Wearing a black saree, her long hair loose, she began exhorting the crowd to seek vengeance for Azad. Then, still screaming against the British, she grabbed a handful of Azad's ashes and applied it to her forehead, saying she had done the same with Kudiram Bose's ashes.+

The by then enraged crowd, screaming against the British, stormed the stage and began to grab at Azad's ashes to apply it to their own foreheads, toppling the stage, sending the leaders overboard. At the end NOTHING was left of the ashes in the urn on stage+

Luckily, Padmakant Malviya, who had helped Azad's uncle, Shiv Vinayak Mishra, locate Azad's body & perform his last rites had stored some ashes separately. It was these ashes that were partly immersed in the Ganga in Varanasi & partly stored in Mishra's home (also in Kashi).+

These ashes made their final journey to the Azad Museum in Allahabad 45 years later in 1976 when there was no Jawaharlal Nehru to threaten or take action against respect being shown at last to our young braveheart who gave his youth and his life for his country. Om Shanti🙏🙏🙏🙏