Lal Qile se aaee awaaz,
Sehgal Dhillon Shahnawaz
Teenon ki ho Umar Daraaz
The voices rent the air outside the Red Fort, on November 5, 1945 as the 3 men were bought to trial. The 3 men of the Indian National Army were charged with waging war against the king in violation of section 121 of the Indian Penal Code. If guilty they would be sentenced to death. A battery of eminent lawyers defended these 3 men in court, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru and demanded that these men be treated as prisoners of war. The then commander in chief Claude Auchinleck, decided to remit the sentences and the men walked free later.
Captain Shah Nawaz Khan– A captain in the Indian Army, captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore during World War II in 1942. He was profoundly influenced by Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, to join the Indian National Army, hypnotized by his personality and speeches in his own words. After independence he would later join the Congress party, and serve as an MP and also a Union Minister.
Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal-A graduate of the IMA, Dehradun, as acting captain in the Baluch Regiment fought against the Japanese in the Battle of Malaya. As prisoner of war, he was motivated by Netaji and joined the INA taking up arms against his former British colleagues.

Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon was born in Algon Kothi, a small village located near Amritsar, to Sardar Takhar Singh, a veterinary surgeon in King George;’s 8th Light Cavalry. Due to his father’s job, he was constantly moving from place to place and studied at various schools, in Lahore, Raiwind, Dipalpore and was a polyglot fluent in Hindi,Urdu, Persian, Punjabi and English. Also a Boy Scout to boot, he completed his high school from DAV in Montgomery( now in Pakistan), in 1931, and later taught science for some time at the Gordon Mission College in Rawalpindi.
In 1933, on the advice of J.F.L.Taylor, his father’s friend, he joined the Indian Army as a sepoy in the Training Batallion of 14th Punjab Regiment and afterwards was sent to IMA, Dehradun where he was considered just average. On the outbreak of World War II, his training in IMA was cut short, and he was posted to Sher Dil Paltan, the 14th Punjab regiment, and he moved to Secunderabad in 1940. On March 3, 1941, Gurbaksh left for Penang Island, then to Ipoh and finally to Sungei Pattani in South Kedah now a state of Malaysia. As part of the 5th Indian Infantry Brigade, Gurbaksh, was assigned the defence of Penang during the War, and was stationed at Jitra, in Malaysia, close to the Thailand border in Dec, 1941.
Following the US entry into the War, after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese forces destroyed the RAF squadrons at Alor Star, Kota Bharu airfields. Under his CO Colonel Fitzpatrick, Gurbaksh led a valiant fight against the invading Japanese forces at the Battle of Changlun, for 8 long hours, before it finally fell. By now it was apparent that the Japanese were taking Singapore, by February 9, 1942, two divisions had landed there. Raffles square was heavily bombed on February 13. 1942, and Gurbaksh Singh, had the rather unpleasant task of disposing off the bodies of those killed. Finally on 15 February, 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and the British forces unconditionally surrendered.It was one of the worst defeats ever for the British empire, their darkest hour as Churchill called it.
