Today the 15th May 2015 is the 108th Birth Anniversary of the Indian Freedom fighter and Shaheed Sukhdev Thaper, who has braved the gallows along with Sgaheed Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajguru

Sukhdev Thapar is an Indian revolutionary who was born on 15th May 1907 in the Chaura Bazar area called Nau Ghara, Ludhiana. His father was Sh. Ram Lal and Mother was Smt. Ralli Devi. Sukhdev is best known as an accomplice of Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajguru in the killing of a British police officer in 1928 in order to take revenge for the death of veteran leader Lala Lajpat Rai. All three were hanged in Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931 in the evening at 7.33 pm. The dead bodies were secretly taken away by breaking the back walls of the jail and were secretly burnt on the banks of River Satluj near Firozepur about 50 miles away from Lahore. The bodies were cut into pieces to make the burial quick.

Sukhdev was an active member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. He, along with Bhagat Singh, Comrade Ram Chandra and Bhagwati Charan Vohra started Naujawan Bharat Sabha in Lahore. The main aims of this organisation is to activate youth in the freedom struggle, inculcate a rational, scientific attitude, fight colonialism and end the practice of untouchability. Sukhdev also participated in the 1929 Prison hunger strike to protest against the inhuman treatment meted out to the inmates. His letter to Mahatma Gandhi, written just prior to his hanging, protesting against the latter's disapproval of revolutionary tactics, throws light on the disparities between the two major schools of thought among Indian freedom fighters.

By Premji