A Pakistani court on Friday dismissed a plea seeking to rename a chowk in Lahore after Bhagat Singh, upholding instead the decision of the local corporation which cited a retired military officer who said that the freedom fighter was not a revolutionary but a "criminal".
The Lahore high court Judge Shams Mehmood Mirza disposed of a petition of Bhagat Singh Memorial Foundation Pakistan seeking to rename Shadman Chowk Lahore after Singh and place his statue where he was hanged, a court official told PTI.
The judge dismissed the petition after hearing arguments by counsels for the Metropolitan Corporation Lahore and the foundation.
The foundation's chairman, advocate Imtiaz Rasheed Qureshi said it would challenge the LHC's decision in the Supreme Court.
Earlier the corporation, which is a part of the district government of Lahore, had told the LHC in a written reply that it scrapped the plan to rename the chowk and place Bhagat Singh's statue where he was hanged 94 years ago.
It said that the plan was dropped "in the light of an observation submitted by Commodore (Retd) Tariq Majeed".
Majeed, who was engaged by the government in a committee to rename Shadman Chowk, in his observations submitted to the Metropolitan Corporation Lahore in November claimed that Singh "was not a revolutionary but a criminal".
"In today's terms he was a terrorist, he killed a British police officer, and for this crime, he was hanged along with two accomplices," the retired officer had said in his his report.
Majeed also claimed that Singh had no role in the freedom movement of the subcontinent.
"He was an atheist and declaring such a criminal a martyr is a crime and an insult to the concept of martyrs of Islam and advertising in his support is against Islam," he said, recommending to the government that the Shadman Chowk must not be named Bhagat Singh Chowk and his statue should not be installed there.
The report also said Singh was influenced by "religious leaders hostile to Muslims and the NGO -- Bhagat Singh Foundation -- is working against Islamic ideology and Pakistani culture, (and) it should be banned".
"Don't the officials of the foundation, who call themselves Muslims, know that it is not acceptable to name a place after an atheist in Pakistan and that Islam prohibits human statues?" it asked.
In response to the report, Qureshi had earlier told PTI that Singh was declared a great revolutionary, freedom fighter and martyr undisputedly.
At a press conference in Lahore in November, the foundation chairman had said that Majeed should remember the speech of Pakistan's founder M A Jinnah for the praise of revolutionary Singh in the Central Assembly before calling him a "criminal and terrorist".
"Jinnah not only praised the sacrificial personality of Bhagat Singh and his comrades but also stood in their support with the strongest possible intention and questioned British law and order and principles," Qureshi had said.
Singh was hanged along with his two comrades -- Rajguru and Sukhdev -- by British rulers on March 23, 1931, at the age of 23 in Lahore, after being tried under charges for hatching a conspiracy against the colonial government and allegedly killing British police officer John P Saunders.
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