Lucknow, Aug 11 (PTI) A century back, police booked around 20 persons for a “robbery” of Rs 4,600, termed it an act against the ruling British government in Uttar Pradesh’s Kakori. Cops at the same police station now remember it as a historic act of revolution and hail those involved as heroes.
“I feel like being part of history as today, on August 11, 2025, marks 100 years of the registration of the case,” Ramadhar, 44, tells PTI.
Ramadhar is the head moharir at the Kakori police station, a post that roughly translates to a clerk or record keeper created during the British Raj.
In 2021, the Uttar Pradesh government renamed the revolutionary event in its official communications as Kakori Train Action, which was previously referred to as the ‘Kakori train robbery’ or the ‘Kakori train conspiracy’. “I read about the Kakori Train Action during my school days but had never imagined that I would be posted at the Kakori police station, which still draws people wanting to know about the case,” the policeman says.
Ramadhar is among 140 cops posted at the Kakori police station, which was built in 1903. He shows a copy of the FIR against 20-25 persons in the Train Action Case to PTI.
According to the Hindi translation of the FIR – from its original in Urdu – by GA Khan, still kept at the police station, the incident took place on August 9, 1925. Two days later, on August 11, 1925, police were given information about it and a case was registered under Section 396 (dacoity with murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
As per the document kept at the Kakori police station, the revolutionaries took “Rs 4,601, 15 annas, and 6 pie” in the Kakori Train Action.
Indian freedom fighters looted the British government treasury to buy arms for their revolution. In 1927, Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’, Ashfaqullah Khan, and Thakur Roshan Singh were awarded the death penalty for their involvement in the act.
Their photographs, along with those of Rajendranath Lahiri, Mahatma Gandhi, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Lal Bahadur Shastri, are prominently displayed at the police station.
The UP government held a ‘Kakori Train Action Shatabdi Mahotsav’ to mark the historic event, now part of the folklore of the Indian independence movement.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on the last day of the centenary celebrations on Friday, sang praises of the freedom fighters involved in the Kakori incident.
“The British treasury that the revolutionaries took in the Kakori Train Action had Rs 4,600. The British government later spent more than Rs 10 lakh at the time to arrest the revolutionaries and awarded them capital punishment, without even giving them a hearing.” Rohit Khatri, the grandson of revolutionary Ramkrishna Khatri, told PTI, “The renaming was a welcome move, for it communicates that the act was carried out for a purpose. We had to coin our own term to describe the action against our aggressors.” He said the first train heist was originally planned for August 8, 1925, but was later pushed to the next day.
Ramkrishna Khatri was among those who served jail time over the case. PTI NAV MAN SKY SKY
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