“Outrage in Calcutta; Terrorist Raid, British Officer Murdered”
Read the headlines of The Times on Tuesday, 9th of December, 1930.
1930: A significant year
1930 was a very significant year in the history of India’s Freedom Struggle against the British Raj. The Indian National Congress went ahead to declare the 26th of January as India’s Independence Day, celebrating it nationwide; the Civil Disobedience Movement was officially started by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and Subhas Chandra Bose was arrested for participating in the same. On 18th April, Surya Sen, better known as MasterDa, had done the unthinkable, raiding the British Armoury with his students and fellow teachers at Chittagong. He was still on the loose, yet to be found. In this year of growing protests against the colonisers, an incident emerged that shook the British at their old capital. The Bengal Volunteers Corps was a group of volunteers organised in the 1928 Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress by none other than Subhas Chandra Bose, who was the GOC, while Mayor Satya Gupta led the organisation.
The Men
Benoy Krishna Bose, aged 22, Dinesh Gupta, aged 19, and Sudhir Gupta, aged 18, were the three young men who had stormed into the Writers Building in Calcutta that winter afternoon of 1930 dressed in European coats and hats, unnoticed with loaded arms, and had made it to the international news. The British media, as well as the Americans, were shocked at the incident.
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| Binoy |
Binoy Krishna Basu was born on 11th September 1908 to Rebatimohan Basu and Kshirodabashini Devi in the village of Rohitbhog, Munshiganj, present-day Bangladesh. He was a close aide of revolutionist Hemchandra Ghosh and, under his guidance, became a secret member of Mukti Sangha, a close association with the Yugantar Party while in college at Mitford Medical School. He became a member of the Bengal Volunteers when it was formed in 1928 by Subhas Chandra Bose, whom Benoy often looked up to. When the “Operation Freedom” movement was started in 1930, to protest against police torture of freedom fighters in jails, he was one of the first to shoot Police Inspector General F.J. Lowman, in August 1930, at the Medical School Hospital in Dhaka and escaped to Calcutta, without completing his medical degree. Supati Roy and Haridas Dutta helped in his smooth escape, and he finally reached North Calcutta. It was in Calcutta that he met the other two. While he shot Lowman point-blank and evaded arrest, a bounty was offered for his head, and Subhas Chandra Bose keenly offered Benoy to escape abroad. Benoy, however, refused this offer and wanted to be a foot soldier in the movement. He was hence chosen to lead the deadly Writers Mission.
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| Dinesh |
Sudhir Gupta, born in 1912 in East Shimulia village, in Dhaka’s Bikrampur, was the youngest of the three. Since his school days, he was influenced by the freedom movement by his teacher Nikunja Sen, who taught at the Banaripara School in Bikrampur. His paternal uncles, Dharani Nath Gupta and Nagendra Nath Gupta, who were caught in the Alipore Bomb Case alongside Aurobindo Ghosh, also inspired him. Initially, he was identified as Badal, most probably a pet name used by fellow freedom fighters, but later news reports corrected his identification to Sudhir Gupta, his official name.
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| Badal |
The Incident:
The British Police Department, on the afternoon of 8th December 1930, was alerted by gunshots from the Secretariat building right next door, at the very famous and iconic red-coloured colonial structure, the Writers Building, which stood in the Dalhousie Square of Calcutta. They rushed to the spot to find N.S. Simpson shot dead in his office, and scared people running for their lives as the sounds of glass shattering echoed in the otherwise quiet winter afternoon.
Three men, termed “Terrorists” in the official report, were found in one of the rooms of the Passport office department by the police forces, but not before they put up a fight with the Police, with their backs to the wall, surrounded by the British forces in their Building of Power. This battle, short and brave, was often termed later as the Battle of the Verandah.
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| Writer's Building |
The official obituary of the assassinated British officer Norman Skinner Simpson stated the incident that happened on Monday, noon of the 8th of December, 1930, at the Writers’ Building in Calcutta, the Secretariat of the British Raj.
“Lieut. Col. N.S. Simpson, Indian Medical Service, Inspector General at Prisons in Bengal, was assassinated by Bengali anarchists in Calcutta, on December 8th. Three Bengalis in European dress entered Writers Building in Dalhousie Square, Calcutta, the headquarters of the Bengal Government and Secretariat, and ran along the main corridor, firing into each of the offices they passed. Col. Simpson was sitting in his chair in the first office; six or seven shots were fired at him, one of which struck him over the heart, killing him instantly. The only other officer hit was John Wood Nelson, Legal Remembrancer, who was struck by a bullet in the thigh, but was not dangerously wounded. The three assassins were chased into an office, where they turned their revolvers on themselves, and when the police entered, they found one man dead, while the other two were seriously wounded."
A version in The Statesman, a popular English-language newspaper, the next day read further:
“Orderly of the D.P.I. was wounded in the leg. A passerby was dumbfounded to see in broad daylight, in the heart of the business quarters of Calcutta, an incident that had all the elements of a Chicago gunning affair.”
Amrita Bazaar Patrika of 9th December 1930, added further:
“Holes near the gates of Mr Nelson’s room and another at the ceiling of Mr Prentice’s room were found later on. Holes were the size of a tennis ball.
They dashed into the Passport office and reloaded their revolvers there. One American Missionary, Mr E.S. Johnson, waiting in that office out of fear, made his escape down with the help of a drain pipe!”
However, these claims, dramatised as a random terror attack to hide the British law enforcement’s inability to provide security in the city’s topmost important building, were dismissed by the Vernacular newspapers and later the Court hearing process. N.S. Simpson was indeed the target of the mission, and not a random prey of a terror attack, as was further agreed upon by not only the media or the Court of Justice but also fellow freedom fighters later on.
The Ananda Bazaar Patrika, the vernacular Bengali newspaper, on the same day, wrote (as translated):
Between 12.15 to 12.30 hours, three Bengali youths entered the office of the Inspector General of the Prisons at Writers Building. Col. Simpson was present in the office alongside his PA (Personal Assistant) then. The young men wanted to talk to him, so his assistant told them to wait outside and let him know the reason for their visit on paper instead. The young men refused to do the needful and pushed him aside to enter the office and fired five or six bullets at Simpson. He died on the spot.
Getting out of his office, the assassins walked across the corridor balcony (Veranda). They ran across the corridor, firing at the windows of the offices and at the roof. There are gunshot marks on the window of Mr Marer. Mr J.W. Nelson, too, has similar marks on the office walls.
At last, they entered the passport office and shot at an American and missed the target. No one was injured. Then they entered Mr Nelson’s office and shot at his thigh. His wound is not serious.
Last heard, one of them committed suicide. The other two are seriously injured and hospitalised. One of them has been identified as Binay Krishna Bose. He gave a statement of Identification, adding that he is the one who killed Lowman. All three of them wore European clothes. They were shouting “Vande Mataram” through the corridors during the incident.”
The three men were cornered in the room while they were probably loading their guns. While Badal took the potassium cyanide he carried and died on the spot, the other two shot themselves with their revolvers. Benoy died in hospital on 13th December after inflicting self-harm on the bullet injury in his head, while Dinesh was the only one who survived to be trial and hanged. His letters to his family reflect a lot on his ideology, his inspiration and his bravery.
The “Victim”:
Norman Skinner Simpson was born in January 1881, took a Scottish Triple Qualification in 1905, joined the Indian Medical Service in 1906, on 1st September as a Lieutenant, and became Colonel 26 years later.
In between, he had seven years of Military duty, joining the civil service in 1913 and again going back to the war fronts in 1914 in Egypt. He was posted in Gallipoli in 1915 and moved to the Mahsud Campaign of the North West Frontiers of India in 1917. After another visit to Egypt in 1918, he finally joined the Jail Department of India in February 1921. After serving for some years as a superintendent of Presidency Jail in Calcutta, for six months, he was an Inspector General of Prison and held his last post in 1929.” reads a portion of his Obituary as written by fellow Englishman and colleague W.G. Hamilton who said, “Our views on penal reform were identical; he was a humane man and held enlightened and very progressive views on the treatment of prisoners.”
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| Forensic Report Images of Writers after the Incident. Picture courtesy: Cambridge University |
Not surprisingly at all, the image of Simpson to the native Indian freedom fighters was that of a cruel and torturous man. He was well known for his innovative interrogations of inmates of the freedom movement and was hence a clear target for the revolutionaries. Although the British tried in vain to prove that Simpson was not the original target and that he was misidentified, Benoy Krishna Bose’s own statement and letters from Dinesh said otherwise. He accepted in court proceedings that their target was indeed Simpson and they had succeeded in their agenda. Another rumour spread by the British Media was that the man who died wasn’t Simpson. This rumour too was deemed wrong when the widow and son of the deceased were presented before the Judiciary to identify the body.
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| Crown Police archive images of the men as they were found. |
Aftermath:
Dinesh Gupta, the only survivor of the mission, was jailed and tried by the British Government for the assassination of N.S. Simpson as well as for making an attempt to kill himself. He was executed on orders of Judge R.R. Gerlick (often pronounced Galik) on the 7th of July, 1931; seven months after his trial began. It is said that Dinesh was given a high dose of drugs to numb his senses the day before the hanging; however, he remained very much in his senses till his last breath. His body was not handed over to his family or fellow revolutionaries and was burnt inside the premises of Alipore Jail under security after he was hanged, and a post-mortem was conducted. His ashes were then dispersed in the Tully Nallah that was beside the jail premises.
Dinesh Gupta’s hanging was not, however, an end to this incident. Barely twenty days later, when the Judge was hearing a case in the Alipore Court, Calcutta, a young man named Bimal Dasgupta was called to the witness box. Clad in a simple white dhoti kurta, this young man, barely twenty-two then, had made his way to the witness box. Before the police presence in the courtroom could react, he had jumped out of the wooden fence, onto the table of the Judge and emptied his gun into the Judge’s chest. He died on the spot. When the police came to capture him, this young man consumed Potassium cyanide and died before the angry Guard Sergeant shot him. In the pocket of his Kurta was a note addressed to the judge saying, “Your death is your reward for hanging Dinesh Gupta.” Further investigations into the matter led to the identification of the man as Kanailal Bhattacharya of the Bengal Volunteers.
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| Kanailal Bhattacharya's picture from Police Files |
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| The Gallows at Alipore Jail, where Dinesh was hanged. |
Today, while roads are named after Kanailal Bhattacharya, on the famous Dalhousie Square, renamed the Binay Badal Dinesh Bagh, stands the statue of these three men who fearlessly entered the British secretariat and engraved their names in the history of India’s struggle for freedom with their blood.
Bibliography:
- Bengal Volunteers by Madhumanti Sengupta
- Anushilan Samiti by Bishwananda Dasgupta
- Police report archives of Kolkata Police
- Tryst with Destiny by Cambridge University
- Binoy Badal Dinesh by Sailesh De
- Binoy Badal Dinesh by Chinmoy Chowdhury
- Newspaper archives by Anandabazar Patrika
- Alipore Jail Museum Archives
