Udham Singh Fired Six Shots at Caxton Hall on 13 March 1940, Almost 21 Years After Jallianwala Bagh, and Was Hanged at Pentonville 140 Days Later

The meeting in the Tudor Room at Caxton Hall in Westminster ran from about 3.00 to 4.30 on the afternoon of 13 March 1940. Sir Percy Sykes, a retired brigadier-general, had just given a lecture on Afghanistan to a joint gathering of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society. A Metropolitan Police report, reproduced in the London journal Lalkar in 1996, quotes Inspector Stevens, who “heard six shots fired”. Sykes told police the shots came from a man leaning against the wall.

Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who had been Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in 1919, was hit twice and died. Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, Lord Lamington and Sir Louis Dane were wounded, none of them seriously. The man with the revolver was Udham Singh, a Punjabi from Sunam who had reached Britain in the mid-1930s. He was hanged at Pentonville Prison 140 days later, on 31 July 1940. This piece sets out what the police file, the trial papers and the later accounts record, and where the historians disagree.

Six shots in the Tudor Room

According to the police report as reproduced, Sykes saw “flashes in quick succession” as Lord Zetland stood to say goodbye, saw O’Dwyer fall, and watched a man named Riches hold the gunman. Sykes took the revolver from Riches and handed it to the police. Counsel magazine, in an article by the barrister Paramjit Ahluwalia, describes the weapon as a Smith and Wesson revolver.

Inspector Deighton found Singh in the room at 4.50. The report has Singh saying “It no use. It all over,” and nodding towards the body. It also records that he said he had a grudge against O’Dwyer and belonged to no society. When he was charged at 10.00 that night, the report has him replying: “I did not mean to kill. I just did it to protest.”

Searchers found 17 rounds in a box and 8 loose ones on him, along with a 1940 diary with the entry “3 p.m. Caxton Hall.” A 1939 diary at his room in Regent’s Park listed O’Dwyer’s address in South Devon, the report says. Ahluwalia, who read the Director of Public Prosecutions file when it became public in 2016, adds that a letter from O’Dwyer to a man named Mool Chand, with O’Dwyer’s home address, was among Singh’s possessions and became Exhibit 23 at the trial. His diary also held the address of Lord Zetland.

Who Michael O’Dwyer was

Michael O’Dwyer was Lieutenant Governor of Punjab from 1913 to 1919, according to The Better India, and was in office when General Reginald Dyer’s troops fired on the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on 13 April 1919. The firing itself is told in our account of the massacre. Ahluwalia writes that O’Dwyer called it a “correct action”, and that the Hunter Inquiry later disagreed. Sempa, reviewing Anita Anand’s book on Singh, says O’Dwyer “endorsed and defended” the army’s action.

The House of Commons argued over his part on 8 July 1920. Mr Spoor told members that “the policy was obviously that of Sir Michael O’Dwyer.” Sir Edward Carson said O’Dwyer had been at the India Office during the months that followed. Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, called the shooting at Amritsar “an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation” and said he accepted full responsibility for the Army Council’s decision on Dyer.

In 1924 O’Dwyer sued Sir Chettur Sankaran Nair over Nair’s book Gandhi and Anarchy. The libel trial opened in London on 30 April 1924 and lasted five weeks. The jury found for O’Dwyer, with one juror dissenting, and Nair refused to apologise. Dyer had died of illness a few years after 1919, Lal notes, and O’Dwyer outlived him.

A boy from Sunam and a disputed day in Amritsar

Vinay Lal, writing for the South Asia site of the University of California, Los Angeles, gives Singh’s birth as 26 December 1899 at Sunam, in Sangrur district, and notes that colonial records say 23 August 1901. A signed entry in an encyclopaedia of Sikh history says he entered the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar on 24 October 1907 with his brother Mukta Singh. He was born Sher Singh and took the name Udham Singh at the orphanage, Lal writes.

Whether he stood in the Bagh on 13 April 1919 is not settled. Kim Wagner, the historian of the massacre, notes the popular story that Singh was there and was wounded in the arm, and adds that there is little evidence for it. On the pledge, Lal says Singh vowed revenge after the killings, though the scene at Harmandar Sahib (the Golden Temple) shown in a 2000 film is of uncertain truth, he adds.

The documented years are scattered. Lal says Singh went to Africa and the United States, where he supported the Ghadar movement and came under the influence of Lala Lajpat Rai. He returned to India in July 1927 carrying arms and banned literature, was sentenced under the Arms Act to four years, and was released in October 1931. Sempa, summarising Anand, says Ghadar supporters gave him money, false papers and lodging. His arrival in London is dated 1933 by Lal and 1934 by the Open University’s South Asian Britain database. Among his aliases, the database lists Frank Brazil.

In jail, Sempa adds, Singh met Bhagat Singh and called him his guru. Bhagat Singh was the dominant intellectual influence on him, in Lal’s view.

Brixton, a hunger strike and a name that kept changing

Singh was held at Brixton prison. He gave his name as Mohamed Singh Azad, which the Open University database reads as a symbol of unity among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and “Azad” means free. The name was tattooed on his forearm, Ahluwalia says, and Singh wrote on 16 March 1940 insisting on keeping it. Lal gives the court version as Ram Mohammad Singh Azad. The prosecution applied to amend the indictment, Ahluwalia says, because the name’s “Mohammed” caused confusion about his religion and race.

Dr Hugh Grierson, the senior medical officer at Brixton, reported on 19 April 1940 that Singh was sane and fit to plead. A hunger strike followed. The Treason Felony Blog dates its start to 26 April and counts 93 force-feedings. Letters of 24 May, Ahluwalia cites, say he had been fed artificially since 1 May. Accounts of its length vary, from 36 days in the Open University database to 42 days by the start of the trial in the Treason Felony Blog.

Two days at the Old Bailey

The trial opened on 4 June 1940 in Court 3 of the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Atkinson. Mr McClure led the prosecution with Christmas Humphreys. Mr Hutchinson led the defence, with Krishna Menon as his junior. The Crown, Ahluwalia says, argued that the case had “no political aspects” and turned on whether the killing was deliberate.

Sir Philip Game, who spoke Hindi, had talked to Singh for fifteen minutes. He wrote nothing down and was not called. Before the sentence, Ahluwalia writes, Singh said he had a statement and began to speak against British imperialism in India. The judge refused to hear a political speech and ordered that nothing be published under the Emergency Powers Act. Singh said he was “not afraid to die”, Ahluwalia reports, and that he had no quarrel with the English public. The judge passed the death sentence on 5 June.

One thing is missing from the official transcript, Ahluwalia notes. Singh called “Inquilab”, meaning revolution, three times as he was led away, and only the Director of Public Prosecutions’ summary notes record it. The statement Singh read in court was never released to the public, according to Lal. The appeal was heard on 15 July and dismissed, the police-report page and the encyclopaedia entry both say.

Pentonville, 31 July 1940

Singh was hanged at Pentonville Prison on 31 July 1940. Eastern Eye reported in 2019 that Albert Pierrepoint’s own notebook, which was being auctioned, names Singh and gives his age as 37. The same notebook misspells his name as “Udhan”.

The encyclopaedia entry says Singh asked at his trial for his ashes to be sent to India and was refused. The Open University database says he was buried at the prison.

How India and its leaders took the news

Lal reports that Mahatma Gandhi spoke of outrage in Harijan on 15 March, and wrote on 23 March that disagreement with O’Dwyer should not stop Indians grieving his killing. The Amrit Bazar Patrika of 18 March, Lal says, linked O’Dwyer to the Punjab events of 1919. Congress leaders were more circumspect, Lal writes, bound by the party’s commitment to non-violence. Sherman Stanley, writing in the Trotskyist paper Socialist Appeal on 23 March 1940, said Gandhi and Congress had at once disowned the man. Sempa, drawing on Anand, says British authorities cast Singh as a lone terrorist with no political backing.

Motive is the other point on which the accounts diverge. The police report as reproduced has Singh saying he did it to protest, and the Crown said the case had no political side. Sempa, summarising Anand, says Singh confessed and named the Amritsar massacre and Indian independence as his reasons.

The long road home

In 1972 the Indian High Commission asked the Metropolitan Police for information about the revolver used at Caxton Hall, a request now filed at Kew as MEPO 26/182. A research project run by the Shaheed Udham Singh Welfare Trust and Punjabi University in Patiala campaigned for the release of the British government files on the trial, and copies are in the Welfare Centre’s records at Birmingham Archives.

The remains came back to Punjab in the mid-1970s. The Open University database, Eastern Eye and the Treason Felony Blog say 1974. Lal and the encyclopaedia entry say 1975, and the entry adds that the Government of India acted at the Punjab Government’s request. At Delhi airport, Lal records, the casket was met by Giani Zail Singh, then Punjab’s Chief Minister, and Shankar Dayal Sharma, then Congress president. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi laid a wreath at Kapurthala House, and cremation rites were held at Sunam on 31 July 1975, Lal says.

Accounts of where he rests differ. The Tribune reported in 2005 that he was buried at Rauza Sharif, Fatehgarh Sahib, where a memorial was put up in 1992. Some of his ashes are kept at the Jallianwala Bagh memorial in Amritsar, Wagner writes, where a statue of him was put up at the entrance in 2018.

On 31 July 2025, All India Radio reported, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him an “immortal son of Mother India”, and a state-level commemoration was held at Sunam. A year later, the same broadcaster reported, Home Minister Amit Shah called him a symbol of “unparalleled courage and valour”.