Shah Nawaz Khan (general)

Shah Nawaz Khan (Urdu: شاہ نواز خان‎; 24 January 1914 – 9 December 1983) was an Indian politician who served as an officer in the Indian National Army during World War II. After the war, he was tried, convicted for treason, and sentenced to death in a public court-martial carried out by the British Indian Army. The sentence was commuted by the Commander-in-chief of the Indian Army following unrest and protests in India.

Khan, who rose to the rank of Captain in the Indian Army, was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore in 1942. A prisoner of war in Singapore, he was profoundly influenced by Subhas Chandra Bose's speeches asking POWs to join the Indian National Army and to fight for a free India. He later stated:

"It will not be wrong to say that I was hypnotized by his personality and his speeches. He placed the true picture of India before us and for the first time in my life I saw India, through the eyes of an Indian."

Impressed by Bose’s patriotic speeches, Nawaz joined the INA in 1943. He was included in the Cabinet of the Arzi Hukumat-e- Azad Hind (INA) formed by Bose. Later, Bose decided to select a regiment consisting of the cream of the INA and send it to action to spearhead the advance into India. Khan led the army into North-Eastern India, seizing Kohima and Imphal which were held briefly by the INA under the authority of the Japanese. In December 1944, Shah Nawaz Khan was appointed Commander of the 1st Division at Mandalay.

Khan was tried, along with General Prem Sehgal and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, for "waging war against the King Emperor" in a public court martial at the Red Fort in Delhi. They were defended by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Asaf Ali, Bhulabhai Desai, Kailash Nath Katju and others based on the defence that they should be treated as prisoners of war as they were not paid mercenaries but bona fide soldiers of a legal government, the Provisional Government of Free India, or the Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, "however misinformed or otherwise they had been in their notion of patriotic duty towards their country" and as such they recognized the free Indian state as their sovereign and not the British sovereign. During the trial, Khan cited the differential treatment meted out to Indian versus British soldiers in the Indian Army. In his testimony, Khan testified that no Indian officers were given the command of a division and only one was allowed to command a Brigade. Khan was given the death sentence by the court but that sentence was reduced to cashiering by the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army.

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