§ Mr. RHYS DAVIESasked the Under-Secretary of State for India how many persons have been arrested recently in 66W India as Bolshevist agents; what action is usually taken by a person to fall in the category of a Bolshevist agent; how many such agents have been recently tried, sentenced, or discharged; and when are the remainder of those arrested, if any, to be tried?
§ Earl WINTERTONThirteen Indians have been arrested on charges of sedition, who are known to be Bolshevist agents. Nine have been tried, of whom one was acquitted, and eight convicted and sentenced. One was pardoned. Three are detained under the State Prisoners Regulation; it has not yet been decided whether they will be prosecuted. The men convicted had been trained in training places for Bolshevist agents, maintained by the Soviet Government at Tashkent and Moscow. They had been sent back to India, under the charge of Soviet officials, as far as the Russian border. The first to be convicted has since been again convicted for endeavouring to send from jail seditious communications to Indian revolutionaries across the border. The others had, it is believed, no opportunity to exercise in India the profession for which they had been trained. They were convicted, not of being Bolshevist agents, but of conspiring to overthrow the British Government in India.