In March 2003, a curious historian caught a glimpse of the word ‘Ajnala’ in fine print on a ragged, vintage book discarded carelessly outside the Town Hall library in Amritsar. That led to the rediscovery of a ‘buried’ massacre, which some say finds an equal only in the Jallianwala Bagh carnage, in scale and brutality.
As 50-year-old amateur historian Surinder Kochhar first picked up the book titled Crisis in Punjab by Frederick Henry Cooper, he had no idea that he would be opening the world’s eyes to the deaths of 282 soldiers of the 26th Native Bengal Infantry Regiment. For over 157 years, their remains had been hidden in a well.
The book led him to the 1857 Kallianwala Martyrs’ Well, beneath the old Gurdwara Singh Sabha in Ajnala, Amritsar near the river Ravi and about 40 km away from the India-Pakistan border.
The skeletal remains of 282 soldiers were dug up on February 28, 2014 in Ajnala, based on Kochhar’s research.
From joining the dots and finding the location of the massacre to finally exhuming the skeletons of the forgotten, brutalised young soldiers, it is a tale ridden with instances
— source thewire.in | Kusum Arora | 11/May/2022