Tuesday, April 1, 2014

408. Phanibhasan Nandy ( ?-1937)

Phanibhasan Nandy was born in Chittagong. He fought with British army in Chittagong Armoury Raid, Jalalabad fight, Ka;larpole Fight. While he was in underground he attacked the area of Chittagong where the Europeans lived and was arrested in 5.5.1930 during exchanges with the police. He was sent to Andaman being convicted as life-imprisonment.He was brought after being attacked with TB and died in Alipore Centre Jail.
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Detached from the main body of the insurgents the absconders in small groups planned for attacking individual centres of power of the Government. One such small party consisting of six young boys, viz., SWADESH RAY, RAJAT SEN, DEBAPRASAD GUPTA, MANORANJAN SEN and two others started from their place of hiding, took a shampan on May 6, 1930, to reach the European Club for an attack.
The news of suspicious movements of some men in a shampan on the Karnafuli reached the Kotwali P.S. and some officers with a number of armed men rushed in a boat and followed the shampan which landed the young men at Lamboor Hat.
    When the police boat had reached the middle of the stream a torch was flashed on them. The pursued reached the other side of the river and the police could see five or six such men receding from the bank towards Kalarpole.
The villagers including the President of the Union Board, a Mohamdan, noticed some six men hurriedly passing along the village road. They were variously dressed and each seemed to have a pistol in his hand. The runaways were closely followed by the villagers and challenged at odd crossings. They fired a few shots to avoid arrest which accidentally killed two men at an interval of a few minutes.
      Two persons, one of whom was Phanindra Nandy, were apprehended, by the villagers. A constable, Prasanna Barua, in trying to arrest one of those men was shot from the effects of which he died on May 9, just after midnight. The four others who now could be clearly seen proceeded towards east through the field as persons had then been streaming from the west. The race continued and in the meantime a large armed police contingent reached the place under a high police official. As the chase continued men came along the track in driblets and a fairly big crowd proceeded by the route covered by the fugitives. 'The police party reached a place called Julda, where they were shown a clump of bamboos or a bamboo grove where four persons were seen lying on the ground very close to each other.
A little before daybreak, at Samirpur village, there was sharp exchange of shots for, a short while and firing from the bamboo grove completely stopped. At dawn when the police reached the place of shelter taken by the young men and found three of them Debaprasad, Rajat and Manoranjan already dead and the fourth man Swadesh in dying condition. He was arrested but could evade all further troubles as death came handy to him within a few hours of his arrest.
    It was found that in addition to other injuries almost every one pi them had some homicidal wounds indicating that they had preferred death with their own weapons to falling captives in the hands of the police. All these boys had participated in the Great Raid of April 18, 1930, that had made history in another field of battle. Swadesh and Manoranjan had share in the attack on the police Line and Rajat, on the Auxiliary Force Armoury.
In the case that was instituted by the Government against the two persons arrested at Kalarpole together with ten others as conspirators, judgment was delivered on March 1, 1932, and all the twelve accused were sentenced to transportation for life.
Source - Roll of Honour - Copy right -Author Kali Charan Ghosh.

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