Bhagat Singh was involved in two high-profile plots against British authorities in India that helped galvanize the Indian independence movement. In 1928 he took part in a plot to kill the police chief responsible for the death of influential Indian writer and politician Lala Lajpat Rai. However, he and a coconspirator mistakenly killed the assistant superintendent of police, J.P. Saunders, and Singh fled the city of Lahore (now in Pakistan) to escape execution. In 1929, protesting against the Defence of India Act, he and an accomplice threw a bomb at the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi before surrendering. While in jail, Singh helped organize a hunger strike to protest against prisoner mistreatment, a demonstration that gained him wide support in India. Nevertheless, he was hanged in 1931 for Saunders’s murder.
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