Shah Nawaz Khan (general)
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Major General Shahnawaz Khan of village Matore, Kahuta, Rawalpindi District, (now in Pakistan) was an Indian freedom fighter, politician and an army officer, hailing from the Janjua Rajput clan of Matore.[1] He is the maternal grandfather of the Indian movie star Shah Rukh Khan.
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[edit] Indian National Army
Lt. Colonel Shahnawaz Khan, son of Capt Sardar Tikka Khan of Matore, studied at the Prince of Wales Royal Indian Military College, Dehradun and was commissioned as an officer in the British Indian Army. He was captured during the Second World War by the Japanese and interned in Singapore. Subhash Chandra Bose encouraged him to join the Indian National Army, to fight the British Empire.
[edit] I.N.A. Trial
At the conclusion of the war, the government of British India brought some of the captured INA soldiers to trial on treason charges. The prisoners would potentially face the death penalty, life imprisonment or a fine as punishment if found guilty. After the war, Lt. Col. Shahnawaz Khan, Colonel Prem Sehgal and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon were put to trial at the Red Fort in Delhi for "waging war against the King Emperor", i.e. the British sovereign. The three defendants were defended by Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai and others based on the defence that they should be treated as prisoners of war as they were not paid mercenaries but bona fide soldiers of a legal government, the Provisional Government of Free India, or the Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind, "however misinformed or otherwise they had been in their notion of patriotic duty towards their country" and as such they recognized the free Indian state as their sovereign and not the British sovereign.[2]
[edit] Ministerial career
Shahnawaz Khan joined the Congress party after dissolution of the I.N.A. and was invited by Jawaharlal Nehru to join his cabinet as Minister of State for Railways. He was elected thrice to the Lok Sabha from Meerut.
[edit] Shahnawaz Committee
In 1956, the government constituted a committee to look into the circumstances around Subhash Chandra Bose's death. Major General, Shah Nawaz Khan, headed the committee, whose members included Suresh Chandra Bose. The Committee began its work in April 1956 and concluded four months later when all three members of the Committee signed a paper that stated that Netaji indeed died in the aeroplane crash at Taihoku (Japanese for Taipei) in Formosa (now Taiwan), on August 18, 1945.
They stated that his ashes were kept in Japan's Renkoji Temple and should be reinstated to India.
[edit] Parental link with Dada Peer Kala
Shah Nawaz Khan s/o Srdar Tikka Khan s/o Burhan Ali Khan s/o Bakar Khan s/o Sardar Muhammad Zaman s/o Sardar Amir Khan s/o Ajmer Khan s/o Muheeb Kuli Khan s/o Barlas Khan s/o Darya Khan s/o Peer Fakhar Khan s/o Gaddai Khan s/o Bhun Khan s/o Prajey Khan s/o Neeli Khan s/o Jas Rai s/o Sultan Ahmed Sani (Dada Peer kala )[citation needed]
