Lala Lajpat Rai was born on 28 January 1865 in a Hindu Aggarwal, a community that claims its descent from the legendary Maharaja Agrasen of Agroha. Lala Lajpat Rai was an Indian freedom fighter. He played a pivotal role in the Indian Independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari.
He was one-third of the Lal Bal Pal triumvirate. He was also associated with activities of Punjab National Bank and Lakshmi Insurance Company in their early stages. In 1914, he quit law practice to dedicate himself to the freedom of India and went to Britain in 1914 and then to the USA in 1917. In October 1917, he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in New York. He stayed in the USA from 1917 to 1920. In 1928, the British government set up the Commission, headed by Sir John Simon, to report on the political situation in India.
The Indian political parties boycotted the Commission, because it did not include a single Indian in its membership, and it met with country-wide protests. In 1927, Lajpat Rai established a trust in her memory to build and run a tuberculosis hospital for women, reportedly at the location where his mother, Gulab Devi, had died of tuberculosis in Lahore. This became known as the Gulab Devi Chest Hospital and opened on 17 July 1934. Now the Gulab Devi Memorial hospital is one of the biggest hospitals of present Pakistan which services over 2000 patients at a time as in patients.
He did not fully recover from his injuries and died on 17 November 1928 of a heart attack. Doctors thought that Scott's blows had hastened his death. However, when the matter was raised in the British Parliament, the British Government denied any role in Rai's death. Although Bhagat Singh did not witness the event, he vowed to take revenge, and joined other revolutionaries, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandrashekhar Azad, in a plot to kill Scott.
However, in a case of mistaken identity, Bhagat Singh was signalled to shoot on the appearance of John P. Saunders, an Assistant Superintendent of Police. He was shot by Rajguru and Bhagat Singh while leaving the District Police Headquarters in Lahore on 17 December 1928.
