Under whose chairmanship a committee was formed to defend the accused in Kakori Case ?

The correct answer is D) Motilal Nehru. After the Kakori train robbery of August 1925 and the arrests that followed, Motilal Nehru presided over the Kakori Conspiracy Defence Committee, which raised funds and organised the legal defence of the accused, including Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan and Roshan Singh.

Why the others are wrong:

• A) Acharya Narendra Dev: a Congress and later socialist thinker and scholar, but not the chairman of this committee.
• B) Govind Ballabh Pant: he was among the lawyers who argued the defence in court, so he is closely linked to the case, but he did not chair the committee.
• C) Chandrabhanu Gupta: a Lucknow lawyer and Congress figure who was involved in the wider legal effort, not the chairman.

The core concept is the role of the Congress and its leaders in political trials, where legal defence doubled as mobilisation of public opinion. This connects to the freedom-struggle and Mains theme of how the Ghadar, HRA and Kakori episodes shaped revolutionary and constitutional politics in the United Provinces.

Trap: candidates pick Govind Ballabh Pant because he is the best-known lawyer in the Kakori trial. Remember that he was a defence counsel, while the chairman of the committee was Motilal Nehru.