Hindu-German Conspiracy Trial of Ghadar Party leaders in San Francisco

Who: Leaders and members of the Ghadar Party, German consular officials and some Americans. Wikipedia says 35 people were tried: nine Germans, nine Americans and 17 Indians. Scroll describes the Indian defendants as mostly Ghadar Party activists, among them Taraknath Das, Chandra Kanta Chakravarty, Ram Chandra, Gobind Behari Lal, Bhagwan Singh, Gopal Singh and Santokh Singh. Scroll names Assistant US Attorney Annette Abbott Adams as the prosecutor.

What: From 1915 Britain pressed the United States to act against the Ghadar Party. The US declined, Wikipedia says, because its law did not forbid seeking to overthrow a foreign government. In May 1917 a federal grand jury indicted Ghadar members for conspiring to form a military enterprise against the United Kingdom from US soil and for breaking US neutrality laws; the San Francisco Chronicle says 105 people were indicted. Scroll says the trial began on 20 November 1917 and ended on 24 April 1918, after 155 days, at a cost of $450,000 to the US government and about 2.5 million pounds to Britain. The Chronicle reports that Chakraverty told the court Indians were trying to do what America had done in 1776.

At the end, 29 defendants were convicted, 14 of them Indian nationalists, Wikipedia says. The Chronicle says one defendant was acquitted and no Indian was given more than 22 months; Chakraverty received 60 days. Scroll says Taraknath Das and Bhagwan Singh received the heaviest sentence, about two years. Wikipedia gives the range of sentences as 30 days to 22 months.

On 24 April 1918, near the end of the trial, the defendant Ram Singh shot dead a fellow defendant, the Ghadar leader Ram Chandra Bharadwaj, in the courtroom, and US Marshal James H. Holohan shot Ram Singh dead. The Chronicle says it happened during the midday recess and that Ram Chandra, who had been removed as head of the party before the trial, was shot four times. Wikipedia says he was believed to have diverted the nationalists' funds for his own use.

Where: The trial was held in the United States District Court in San Francisco, with Judge Van Fleet presiding, according to Wikipedia.

Why it mattered: The British wanted Taraknath Das and Bhagwan Singh deported to India to face trial, but the US Department of Justice intervened, Scroll says. Wikipedia adds that strong public sympathy in the US led the Department not to deport any of the Indian defendants. In Punjab, the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial that began on 26 April 1915 tried 291 people and sentenced 42 to death and 114 to transportation for life, the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism records. Scroll says Ghadar's followers in the United States were largely Punjabi migrants, mainly farmers, with some students.