Question

Who among the following advocates had appeared for the INA Trials at Delhi in 1945-46?
1. Dr. Rajendra Prasad
2. Bhulabhai Desai
3. K. M. Munshi
4. Sardar Patel
5. None of the above/More than one of the above

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 2 : Bhulabhai Desai

The correct answer is Bhulabhai Desai.

• When the Japanese routed the Allies in Southeast Asia, they took some 60,000 soldiers of the British Indian army prisoners.
• 20,000 of them agreed to switch sides and go to war against their former masters- the British, in the Indian National Army under the command of Subhas Chandra Bose.
• After the Allies won the war, the INA soldiers once again became prisoners under Britishers.
• The British Government decided to make an example of the INA leaders by performing their court-martial and treason trial-the first one was to take place in Delhi’s iconic Red Fort.
• Of the three INA generals arraigned for the first trial were a Hindu (Prem Kumar Sehgal), a Muslim (Shah Nawaz Khan) and a Sikh (Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon).
• The INA Defence Committee was a committee established by the Indian National Congress in 1945 to defend those officers of the Indian National Army who were to be charged during the INA trials.
• The committee declared the formation of the Congress' defence team for the INA and included famous lawyers of the time, including Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali, Jawaharlal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Kailash Nath Katju and Lt. Col Horilal Varma Bar at Law.
• Over the course of 10 hours spread across two days, Desai presented a stirring defence without any interruption or notes, which among other aspects included “probably the first legal argument before any court in the world which sought to establish the legal right of an enslaved nation to wage a war of national liberation against its foreign ruler.”