Hyderabad: A joint study by the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and other institutes has found that 160-year-old human skeletons excavated in Punjab in 2014 belonged to Indian soldiers from UP, Bihar and West Bengal — all executed for revolting against the British.
The identity and geographic location of the skeletons, excavated from an old well in Ajnala town of Amritsar district, had been a topic of intense debate. While some historians believed that they belonged to people killed in riots during the India-Pakistan partition, others believed they were of Indian soldiers killed by the British army during the revolt of 1857.
Dr J.S. Sehrawat, an anthropologist from Panjab University, collaborated with CCMB, Hyderabad, the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) to establish the roots of these martyrs using DNA and isotope analyses.
It was established that the skeletons belonged to residents of the Gangetic plain region. The study was published on Thursday in the journal ‘Frontiers in Genetics.’
“DNA analysis helps in understanding the ancestry of people and isotope analysis sheds light on food habits. The DNA sequences of the skeletons matched with people from UP, Bihar and West Bengal,” said Dr K. Thangaraj, chief scientist, CCMB and director, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad.
“The results from this research are consistent with the historical evidence that the 26th Native Bengal Infantry Battalion consisted of people from the eastern parts of Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and UP,” stated Dr J.S. Sehrawat, the first author of the study.
As per historical records, soldiers from this battalion were posted at Mian-Meer, Pakistan and they killed British officers in a revolt. They were captured by the British army near Ajnala and executed. CCMB director Dr Vinay Nandicoori said, “Ancient DNA study is a powerful tool not only to understand our past but also help us in understanding historical perspective.”
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