01Bismil’s town
Ram Prasad Bismil was born here on 11 June 1897. As a boy in Shahjahanpur he came to the Arya Samaj, learned Sanskrit and the discipline of brahmacharya, and began to write the Hindi and Urdu verse that gave him his pen name. He founded the Hindustan Republican Association in 1924. Ashfaqulla Khan, a Pathan of the same town, became his closest comrade; they were the Hindu and the Muslim of one mohalla who went to the gallows on the same day. Thakur Roshan Singh came from a village of this district.
02Kakori and after
On 9 August 1925 the party stopped the train at Kakori near Lucknow and took the government treasury it carried. The trial ran for more than a year. On 19 December 1927 Bismil was hanged at Gorakhpur, Ashfaqulla at Faizabad and Roshan Singh at Allahabad; Rajendra Lahiri had been hanged at Gonda two days before. Bismil wrote his autobiography in the condemned cell. The town remembers the three of its sons together, and 19 December is kept here as Shaheed Divas.
The life of this place
- 1647 CEThe town was founded and named after the emperor Shah Jahan.
- 11 June 1897Ram Prasad Bismil was born here.
- 9 August 1925Bismil, Ashfaqulla and their comrades carried out the Kakori train action.
- 19 December 1927Bismil, Ashfaqulla and Roshan Singh were hanged in three different jails.
