The Peshawar Conspiracy Cases (1921-27)

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  In our earlier section on Party formation, we have stated that an abortive attempt was made to form a CPI in Tashkent with muhajirs in 1920 by MN Roy and other Indian communists abroad. Out of the 200 muhajirs who crossed over to Russia around the year 1920, some 40 to 50 joined the political and military school at Tashkent and later the Communist University for the Toilers of the East in Moscow. From their foreign office, the British intelligence got the information that batches of trained personnel were being sent to India by the CPI in Tashkent. The first batch reached Peshawar on 3 June, 1921. The British police arrested them as “Bolshevik agents” and started the conspiracy cases. From 1921 to 1927 five conspiracy cases were launched against those early communists and national revolutionaries. The distant town of Peshawar was chosen as the venue of the sham trials, so that it would be easy to fabricate news about Russian or Bolshevik ‘destabilisation polities’ and also the accused would not get the benefit of the Jury System.
  The first trial under section 121-A of the Indian Penal Code was started with the arrest of Mohammad Akbar, the principal accused and Bahadur, the Tibetan servant of Md. Akbar on 25 September, 1921. Hafizullah Khan, father of Md. Akbar, was also made co-accused in the first Communist Conspiracy case, “The Crown Vs. Md. Akbar and others”. The mockery of a trial took place in the sessions court of JHR Fraser (ICS) who pronounced his judgement on 31 May, 1922, giving 3 years’ rigorous imprisonment (RI) for Md. Akbar and one year’s RI for Bahadur. Hafizullah Khan, who acted as a British agent, was acquitted and released. No documentary evidence or exhibit was necessary to prove the guilt of the accused — to prove that a conspiracy to “overthrow the king-emperor from his sovereign right” existed and to claim that the accused was a member of it was considered enough for punishment under section 121-A, IPC for punishment.
  The second conspiracy case was nothing but a continuation of the first one. Mohammad Akbar was again convicted for smuggling out letters from jail and breaking jail discipline. Two other co-accused were Mohammad Hassan of Baluchistan and Ghulam Mehboob of Peshawar for illegal possession of duplicate copies of the said letter. A travesty of trial took place to prove that Md. Akbar was trying to make “contact with his revolutionary colleagues in Chamarkand for the same purpose”. The judgement was passed on 27 April, 1923 : seven years’ RI for Md. Akbar and five years’ RI for the other two co-accused, with three months solitary confinement to each of them.
  The third Peshawar conspiracy case, otherwise known as Moscow-Tashkent conspiracy case began on 4 April, 1923 (“The Crown Vs. Akbar Shah and seven others” under section 121-A, IPC) in the sessions court of JHR Fraser. Summarising his judgement, Fraser said that the accused “are not being convicted because they have adopted pure communism, but because they are emissaries of the communism adopted by the Bolsheviks and Roy”. Out of the eight convicts, Akbar Shah and Gauhar Rahaman (Afjal) were given two years’ RI; Feroz-uddin, Abdul Majid, Habib Ahmad, Sultan Mohammad and Rafiq Ahmad one year’s RI. Fida Ali, who became the government approver and Abdul Qadar, the British spy, were acquitted and released.
  The next Peshawar conspiracy case was “The Crown Vs. Mohammad Shafiq”, who surrendered to the British police on 10 December, 1923. The verdict was given on 4 April, 1924 : three years’ RI. No further ‘proof’ was necessary to convict Shafiq because he was an ‘active member’ of the ‘conspiracy’ that was already ‘proved’. The sessions judge G Conner summed up his verdict as follows, “Unlike other Indians at the time with the accused, the latter was an active agent of revolutionary party and unlike his companions who left the country, the accused elected to remain behind and continued his revolutionary work. … Before his surrender he visited India as a Bolshevik agent. … He was sent by Roy on a mission to India”. And so he ‘should be sentenced’.
  The Fifth Peshawar conspiracy case Began in 1927 against Fazl Illahi Qurban on the same charge of “receiving training in Moscow and Tashkent for the same purpose”. He was sentenced to five years’ RI which was later reduced to three years’ RI on an appeal to higher court.
  The fear psychosis about the spread of Bolshevism and class hatred against the communist ideology were the principal reasons for the fabricated conspiracy cases of Peshawar.
  Unfortunately, the series of conspiracy cases failed to evoke any response from the nationalists. Only MN Roy wrote an article — “Manufacturing Evidence” — accusing the British government, which was published in the Comintern journal Inprecor.