Official Question UPSC 2025
Who provided legal defence to the people arrested in the aftermath of Chauri Chaura incident?
Solution & Analysis
Answer: B
According to the historical archives of the Allahabad High Court and Bipan Chandra's documentation of the freedom struggle, the aftermath of the Chauri Chaura incident (1922) resulted in severe colonial retribution.
•The Legal Crisis: Following the violence where a police station was torched, British authorities arrested hundreds of locals, rapidly sentencing many to death to set a deterrent example.
•The Intervention: Madan Mohan Malaviya, alongside his son Krishna Kant, took up the mammoth task of providing legal defence for the accused in the Allahabad High Court.
•The Outcome: Through their rigorous legal arguments, they successfully secured major sentence reductions, saving a vast majority of the accused from the gallows.