A secret tunnel connecting to the Red Fort in Chandni Chowk was unearthed from inside a room in the Delhi Legislative Assembly in Civil Lines on Thursday. Delhi Legislative Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel said that the tunnel connects the legislative assembly to Red Fort and was used by the British to avoid reprisal while moving freedom fighters.
“When I became an MLA in 1993, there was hearsay about a tunnel present here that goes till Red Fort and I tried to search for its history. But there was no clarity over it,” the Delhi Assembly Speaker said.
“Now we have found the mouth of the tunnel but we are not digging it further as all the paths of the tunnel have been destroyed due to metro projects and sewer installations,” Goel added.
What was the purpose of the tunnel?
He further said that the Delhi Legislative Assembly, which was used as Central Legislative Assembly after shifting of capital from Kolkata to Delhi in 1912, was turned into a court in 1926 and Britishers used this tunnel to bring freedom fighters to the court.
The distance between Delhi Assembly and Red Fort is around 5.6 kilometers.
Room to be turned into tourist attraction, shrine for freedom fighters:
“We all knew about the presence of a gallows room here but never opened it. Now it was the 75th year of independence and I decided to inspect that room. We intend to change that room into a shrine of freedom fighters as a tribute to them,” he said.
The Speaker added that in view of the history of the Delhi Legislative Assembly associated with the independence of the country, he intends to open the gallows room for the tourists by the next independence day and the work for the same has already started.
“This place has a very rich history in the context of the freedom struggle. We intend to renovate it in a way that tourists and visitors can get a reflection of our history,” he said. (ANI)
