July 31-August 1, 1857. It was the day of Bakrid (Id-ul-Fitr).

Two hundred and e

ighty-two sepoys of the Indian army, who rebelled against the British colonial o
ccupation of India, were massacred and dumped into a dry well 100 yards from the
Ajnala police station in Amritsar district. The remains were dug out recently b
y the town people themselves, without any governmental help. At the time of this
article going to press, the cremation was scheduled to take place on August 1.
The Punjab Government has allotted a plot of land for the cremation, and a memor
ial will be built on it later.
Two accounts are available about the Ajnala incident. One was the colonial versi
on of Frederic Cooper, the then Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar district, whose
book The Crisis in the Punjab from the 10th of May Until the Fall of Delhi was p
ublished in 1858 from London. The other, published in the 1920s, was a nationali
st version, by Giani Hira Singh Dard, a respected Punjabi writer, historian and
editor of the Punjabi magazine Phulwari from Amritsar. His version was carried w
ith photographs in the November 1928 Fansi Ank (Execution Issue) from Allahabad,
and it was later included in the nationalist historian and editor Pt. Sunder La
ls proscribed book Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj (British Rule in India). Giani Hira Si
ngh Dard had recorded the eyewitness account of Baba Jagat Singh, who was nearly
95 in 1928 and was in his twenties at the time of the massacre.
Rebellion broke out in Meerut on May 10, 21 days ahead of the decided date. As p
er Coopers account, thousands of Poorbeah sepoys of the 26th Regiment of Bengal N
ative Infantry were disarmed in Lahores Meean Meer Cant. The rebellion spread in
different regions of Punjab, which Cooper spelled as Lahore, Umritsur, Phillour,
Jhelum, Sealkote, Jullundur, Ferozepore, Sirsa, Hote Mardan, Peshawur and Loodh
ianah . On July 30, nearly 500 disarmed sepoys rebelled near Ajnala. One of them
Prakash Singh, alias Prakash Pandey killed Major Spencer with the Majors own swo
rd, and they all fled south, only to be trapped near Ajnala, by Tehsildar Dewan
Pran Naths agents, who alerted the district administration. Armed forces arrived
and rained bullets. Many people jumped into the river near the village of Daddia
n and drowned. Others were taken to the Ajnala police station to be hanged, whil
e some were forced into a dungeon. Deputy Commissioner Cooper had ordered a long
rope. The rebels were to be killed on the night of July 31. Due to rain, the ex
ecution was postponed until the next morning.
On August 1, 237 rebel sepoys were taken out to an open ground in front of the p
olice station and killed in turns of 10. When those in the dungeon did not show
up, it was found that 45 of them had suffocated to death. The 282 bodies were th
rown into a dry well, 100 yards from the police station. The well was filled wit
h sand. Cooper called it rebels grave and wanted that written in Persian, Gurmukhi
and English. At two places in his book, he compares this well to Holwells Black H
ole of Calcutta of 1756 and the well of Cawnpore of 1857, where rebels dumped th
e bodies of British officials. Coopers glee on attaining revenge is evident. There
is a well at Cawnpore, but there is also one at Ajnala! The well was in place ti
ll 1972, inscribed with the words Kalian Wala Khuh (The Well of Blacks).
In 1928, it looked like a raised sand hill. In 1957, the centenary celebrations
of 1857 were observed here in the presence of the then Chief Minister Pratap Sin
gh Kairon. However, in 1972, villagers built a room over the well and turned it
into a Gurdwara. In 2007, the 150th anniversary of the 1857 killings was observe
d at the site.
In 2012, the town people formed an 11-member committee of all practising Sikhs,
led by trade unionist Amarjit Singh Sarkaria, to honour the martyrs by disinterr
ing their remains from the well. They built a new Gurdwara nearby and began digg
ing of the well on February 28, 2014. Before beginning the work, they tried thei
r best to involve the State and Central Governments, but their efforts were futi
le as no agency, including the Archaeological Survey of India showed interest. W
ithin three days of digging, nearly hundred human skulls, teeth and bones were e
xhumed. Hundreds of volunteers took part in the digging and thousands gathered t
o watch. Medals, jewellery and coins were also retrieved.
Officials from the administration and the Archaeology department turned up to co
llect the remains for DNA testing.
The managing committee renamed Kalian Wala Khuh as Shaheedan Wala Khuh (Martyrs W
ell) and appealed to the Governments of Punjab and India to give them the vacant
land nearby, under the control of the army, for the cremation.
Chaman Lal, retired Professor from JNU, New Delhi, is presently Professor-Coordi
nator of Centre for Comparative Literature at Central University of Punjab, Bath
inda, and author of Understanding Bhagat Singh.