Thursday, December 12, 2013

203. Charles Fryars Andrews (visit- sl. 44), 204.Chittapriya Rotchoudhuri (1894-1915)

Chittapriya was born in Madaripur, Dt.Faridpur. He was a member of Secret revolutionary organisation and a colleague of Purna Das, a revolutionary leader of Faridpur. He was arrested in 1913 and was imprisoned  for 5 months in Faridpur Conspiracy case. He and some of his colleagues  assassinated the Police inspector Suresh Mukherjee, on duty, on the road, on 18th February, 1915 and on the day of Convocation of Calcutta University. He, as a colleague of Bagha Jatin,  participated in the attempt of procuring arms from Germany, Japan, America and Dutch East India company
As soon as the information reached the British authorities, they alerted the police, particularly in the delta region of the Ganges, and sealed off all the sea approaches on the eastern coast from the NoakhaliChittagong side to Odisha. Harry & Sons was raided and searched, and the police found a clue which led them to Kaptipada village, where Jatin was staying with Manoranjan Sengupta and Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri; a unit of the Police Intelligence Department was dispatched to Balasore.
Jatin was kept informed and was requested to leave his hiding place, but his insistence on taking Niren and Jatish with him delayed his departure by a few hours, by which time a large force of police, headed by top European officers from Calcutta and Balasore, reinforced by the army unit from Chandbali in Mayurbhanj State, had reached the neighbourhood. Jatin and his companions walked through the forests and hills of Mayurbhanj, and after two days reached Balasore Railway Station.
The police had announced a reward for the capture of five fleeing "bandits", so the local villagers were also in pursuit. With occasional skirmishes, the revolutionaries, running through jungles and marshy land in torrential rain, finally took up position on 9 September 1915 in an improvised trench in undergrowth on a hillock at Chashakhand in Balasore. Chittapriya and his companions asked Jatin to leave and go to safety while they guarded the rear. Jatin, however refused to leave them.

(Bagha Jatin) 
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincers movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin and Jatish were seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren were captured after their ammunition ran out. Bagha Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915. Ross Hedvíček[41] observes in the article already mentioned: "India had to wait for another thirty years to have her democracy... Mahatma Gandhi was as yet in South Africa." During a conversation with Charles Tegart on 25 June 1925, Gandhiji qualified Jatin Mukherjee as "a divine man." And the author of the article (son of an officer in the Special Police created by Tegart) adds that Gandhiji did not know what Tegart told his colleagues: "Had Jatin Mukherjee been an Englishman, the English would have erected his statue at Trafalgar Square, by the side of Nelson's." 
 Police, however, discovered the hideout of Jatin in a paddy field. On 9 September 1915, after heavy exchange of fire, two revolutionaries surrendered. Police found Jatin dead with two others injured. Of the two injured one died later and was identified as Chitta Priya Roy Choudhury of Madaripur.  [T Hossain].
The contingent of Government forces approached them in a pincers movement. A gunfight ensued, lasting seventy-five minutes, between the five revolutionaries armed with Mauser pistols and a large number of police and army armed with modern rifles. It ended with an unrecorded number of casualties on the Government side; on the revolutionary side, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri died, Jatin and Jatish were seriously wounded, and Manoranjan Sengupta and Niren were captured after their ammunition ran out. Jatin died in Balasore hospital on 10 September 1915.. 

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