Bhagat Singh ( Punjabi pronunciation: [pə̀ɡət̪ sɪ́ŋɡ] ( listen ) 1907 [a] – 23 March 1931) was an Indian socialist revolutionary whose two acts of dramatic violence against the British in India and execution at age 23 made him a folk hero of the Indian independence movement . In December 1928, Bhagat Singh and an associate, Shivaram Rajguru , fatally shot a 21-year-old British police officer, John Saunders, in Lahore , British India , mistaking Saunders, who was still on probation, for the British police superintendent, James Scott, whom they had intended to assassinate. [4] They believed Scott was responsible for the death of popular Indian nationalist leader Lala Lajpat Rai , by having ordered a lathi charge in which Rai was injured, and, two weeks after which, died of a heart attack. Saunders was felled by a single shot from Rajguru, a marksman. [5] He was then shot several times by Singh, the postmortem report showing eight bullet wounds. [6] Another associate