अमर शहीद अशफ़ाक़उल्ला ख़ाँ: व्यक्तित्व और कृतित्व (काकोरी के अमर शहीद का जीवन व रचनाएँ)

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all of whom repeat the story, there is nothing in particular to note.
There are small discrepancies in their evidence but not such as by
themselves would excite suspicion. The counsel for the Crown has
pointed to the inability of some of these witnesses to give details
about the manner in which the Milad was celebrated in other
years or at other peoples' houses, but on this too I do not lay much
stress. More significant appear to be the admissions that none of
the witnesses knows of any other family in Shahjahanpur which O. P. 155.
holds the Milad at this time and that there is at least one month
more auspicious than Shaban for the purpose. The prosecution
argue with some force that if a definite date were fixed for the
Milad every year it would naturally be fixed at the most auspicious
time. They also point out—and this is possibly the greatest weak-
ness in the defence story—that as the Muhammadan year is shorter
by ten days than the English year, after eight years Anwar
Husain Khan would now be holding Milad at quite a different
season from that in which he held it when he originally fixed the
date, and that the reason he gives for holding it on the 13th Sha-
ban, namely that it suits his pocket as he realises the profits of his
sugar factory about a month before, is not therefore very con-
vincing. It is rather in view of these improbabilities than because
the evidence is on the face of it unreliable that I reject the story.
108. Seven witnesses have been produced to show that
Ashfaqullah was in Bhopal at the time of the
Kakori alibi. Kakori dacoity. His brother, Safiullah Khan,
(D. W. 21) says that in May, 1925, Ashfaqullah
left school for the second time with the intention of taking service
somewhere. He went to Bhopal with this object the last week of
July and returned the third week of August. While he was away
30 the witness received letters from him which he did not keep. They
were to the effect that he had.applied for employment but was
unable to obtain it immediately "as the Begam Sahiba was away
in England": Another brother of Ashfaqullah named Shahan Shah
Khan alias Munnu Khan is employed in the Bhopal State as a
criminal peshkar of the district magistrate, Ashta, and there can
be no doubt that Ashfaqullah visited him from time to time.
Safiullah Khan says that Ashfaqullah went to Bhopal for some
time, after discontinuing his studies on account of the non-co-
operation movement. He stayed there once for several months in
40 1923. The correspondence found with Ashfaqullah at the time of
his arrest shows that he was in Bhopal part of the time that he was
absconding.
It should be noted that his brother Shahan Shah Khan has not
appeared to support his alibi.