Padma awards: Which Sobha Singh testified against Bhagat Singh?

A viral post on social media has created confusion on the identity of a man who was awarded Padma Shri in 1983 by the then Congress government. Padma awards have been at the centre of a controversy this year with questions being asked of the government for honouring actor Kangana Ranaut with Padma Shri after she caused outrage with remarks that India’s Independence in 1947 had come as a result of “bheekh” (alms) and that the country had attained real freedom in 2014 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power with a thumping majority under Narendra Modi’s leadership.

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Soon after, some social media users also attacked the Congress on the basis of a viral postcard in Bengali which claimed the party had awarded Padma Shri to Sobha Singh, who had testified against freedom fighter Bhagat Singh in court and “was instrumental in sending him to the gallows.” 

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Sobha Singh, the painter and Sobha Singh, the contractor

However, the Padma Shri awardee in question is a painter named Sobha Singh who received the honour in 1983, according to an India Today report.

A website in Sobha Singh’s name also has a picture showing him receiving the Padma Shri from then President of India, Giani Zail Singh.

According to the website, Sobha Singh died in 1986 and a postal stamp was issued in his honour in 2001. The Punjab government also honoured him with a D.Litt award.

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The Sobha Singh in the viral postcard is the father of author and Padma Vibhushan awardee late Khushwant Singh. However, Khushwant’s father, one of the contractors roped in by the British to build Lutyens Delhi,  was never awarded a Padma Shri even though there is some evidence that he indeed had a link to Bhagat Singh’s trial.

According to an article in Outlook magazine, which quoted Indian jurist A G Noorani’s book “The Trial of Bhagat Singh”, Sobha Singh had testified before the British court that he saw Bhagat Singh throwing bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly.

Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were sentenced to death in the Lahore conspiracy case and hanged in March 1931.