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People &
Associates
Fifteen documented lives

A raid is not a leader. These are the people who commanded the groups, cut the wires, carried the messages, sheltered the fugitives, died on the hill — and, in one case, informed on them. Each entry states what is documented and stops where the documentation stops.

Entries 15 Youngest recorded death 21 Longest survival to 1995

Before you read

Why there are no photographs on this page

The image archive behind this site consists of portraits of Surya Sen alone. It holds no photographs of any of the other people described below, and this archive will not illustrate a real person with a picture of someone else, a generic period photograph, or a generated image. Each entry is therefore identified by a monogram rather than a face.

Photographs of several of these figures do exist in institutional collections. Where a verified image can be properly sourced and credited in future, it will be added here and nowhere else. The five images that are held are catalogued in the Gallery.

Group one The core of the Chittagong group

Surya Sen

1894 – 1934 · “Masterda”

Schoolteacher; organiser and leader of the Chittagong group

Born at Noapara, Raozan, on 22 March 1894. Recruited into the revolutionary underground at Berhampore College in 1916; came to Chittagong in 1918, where he taught at a national school and became president of the district Congress branch in the same year. Imprisoned 1926–28. Planned and led the raid of 18 April 1930, at which he proclaimed a Provisional Revolutionary Government. Arrested on 16 February 1933 after being betrayed, and hanged at Chittagong on 12 January 1934.

At the raid: Overall leadership; took the salute and proclaimed the provisional government at the police armoury
Outcome: Executed 12 January 1934, aged 39

Full biography

Ganesh Ghosh

22 June 1900 – 16 October 1994

Led the group that captured the police armoury

Born in the Magura subdivision of the Bengal Presidency; enrolled at the Bengal Technical Institute in Calcutta in 1922. On the night of 18 April 1930 he commanded the group that took Chittagong’s police armoury — the objective at which the provisional government was proclaimed.

He escaped afterwards to Chandernagore, then French territory. The safe house was raided on 1 September 1930; Jiban Ghoshal was killed and Ghosh was arrested. He was deported to the Cellular Jail at Port Blair in 1932 and released in 1946.

At the raid: Commanded at the police armoury
Imprisonment: Cellular Jail, Port Blair, 1932–1946
Later life: Elected to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly from Belgachia in 1952, 1957 and 1962
Parliament: Member of the fourth Lok Sabha for Calcutta South, 1967–1971

Lokenath Bal

8 March 1908 – 4 September 1964

Took the Auxiliary Force armoury; commanded at Jalalabad hill

Born at Dhorla village in Chittagong district. On 18 April 1930 he led the group of about ten men that captured the Auxiliary Force armoury, and four days later he commanded the revolutionaries during the engagement at Jalalabad hill on 22 April, in which twelve of them were killed — including his younger brother Harigopal Bal.

He was arrested on 1 September 1930 after a gunfight with police, and sentenced to transportation for life on 1 March 1932. Held at the Cellular Jail, Port Blair, he was released in 1946.

At the raid: Commanded at the Auxiliary Force armoury
Sentence: Transportation for life, 1 March 1932
Later life: Deputy commissioner of the Calcutta Corporation from 1952 until his death in 1964

Ananta Singh

1 December 1903 – 25 January 1979

One of the leaders of the raid

Born in Chittagong, and one of the group’s senior figures on 18 April 1930. He escaped with Ganesh Ghosh and Jiban Ghoshal, was involved in an encounter with police at Feni railway station, and reached Chandernagore. On learning of the treatment of imprisoned comrades, he surrendered to the police in Calcutta on 28 June 1930.

Sentenced to transportation for life and sent to Port Blair, he took part in a prolonged hunger strike there in 1932 and was afterwards moved to a mainland jail; he was released in 1946. He later wrote several Bengali volumes on the Chittagong movement, including an autobiography whose title translates as Some Call Me a Robber, Some Call Me a Revolutionary.

His post-independence life took an unusual and contested turn: in the late 1960s he founded an armed political group in West Bengal, was arrested in 1969 and imprisoned until 1977. He died two years later.

At the raid: Among the leaders on 18 April 1930
Surrendered: 28 June 1930, Calcutta
Wrote: Bengali memoirs and histories of the Chittagong group

Ambika Chakrabarty

January 1892 – 6 March 1962

Destroyed Chittagong’s communications on the night of the raid

Born in Chittagong and a member of the Jugantar circle there, he was Surya Sen’s associate in the Assam-Bengal Railway treasury robbery of December 1923 — seven years before the raid.

On 18 April 1930 he led the group that destroyed the district’s communication system. He was seriously injured at Jalalabad hill on 22 April but escaped, and was arrested some months later. Sentenced to death, he had the sentence reduced on appeal to transportation for life and was sent to the Cellular Jail at Port Blair.

At the raid: Commanded the communications group
Sentence: Death, commuted on appeal to transportation for life
Later life: Released 1946; joined the Communist Party of India; elected to the Bengal Provincial Legislative Assembly in 1946 and to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly for Tollygunge South in 1952
Death: Killed in a road accident in Calcutta, 6 March 1962

Nirmal Sen

died 13 June 1932

Close comrade of Surya Sen; killed at Dhalghat

One of Surya Sen’s closest associates in the years after the raid, and among the senior figures who remained at large in the Chittagong countryside through 1930–32.

On 13 June 1932 a party of British military and police under Captain Cameron surrounded the house at Dhalghat where Surya Sen was meeting comrades. In the encounter Cameron was killed — accounts differ as to whether by Nirmal Sen or by Apurba Sen — and Nirmal Sen and Apurba Sen were both killed while covering the escape of Surya Sen and the others present, who included Pritilata Waddedar.

Role: Senior member of the group after April 1930
Outcome: Killed at Dhalghat, 13 June 1932

Tarakeswar Dastidar

1909 – 12 January 1934

Led the movement after Surya Sen’s arrest; executed with him

Born in Chittagong in 1909, he joined the Indian Republican Army under Surya Sen and took part in the raid of 18 April 1930. Later that year he was seriously injured in a bomb explosion while weapons were being made.

After Surya Sen’s arrest in February 1933 he took charge of what remained of the movement. He was arrested on 19 May 1933 following an armed encounter with police at Gahira, sentenced to death on 14 August 1933, and hanged alongside Surya Sen at Chittagong on 12 January 1934. He was in his mid-twenties.

At the raid: Participant, 18 April 1930
After February 1933: Directed the remaining organisation
Outcome: Executed 12 January 1934 with Surya Sen

Group two The women of the Chittagong movement

Bengal’s revolutionary societies had been almost entirely male. Two women joined the Chittagong group in the early 1930s and within months were holding operational responsibility.

Pritilata Waddedar

5 May 1911 – 24 September 1932

Led the attack on the Pahartali European Club

Born at Dhalghat village in Patiya, Chittagong. She studied at Dr Khastagir Government Girls’ High School in Chittagong, placed first in the intermediate examinations at Eden Mohila College in Dhaka, and took a philosophy degree with distinction at Bethune College, Calcutta — a degree the university withheld at the time and finally awarded in 2012.

She met Surya Sen on 13 June 1932, the day of the Dhalghat encounter, and was accepted into the group over the objections of some of its men. She supplied explosives and took part in actions against telephone and telegraph offices and police lines.

On 24 September 1932 she led the attack on the Pahartali European Club — the objective that had failed on the night of the raid — after Kalpana Datta, who had reconnoitred it, was arrested. The club was set alight and fired into; one person was killed and eleven injured. Wounded and cut off, she took potassium cyanide rather than be captured. She was twenty-one.

Joined: 13 June 1932
Commanded: Pahartali European Club attack, 24 September 1932
Remembered: A bronze sculpture at the Pahartali Railway School, unveiled in 2012; a hall of residence at the University of Chittagong; schools and roads in Bangladesh

Kalpana Datta

27 July 1913 – 8 February 1995

Reconnaissance and operations; tried alongside Surya Sen

Born at Sripur in Chittagong district. She matriculated in 1929 and went to Calcutta to study science at Bethune College. In May 1931 she joined the Indian Republican Army, Chattagram branch.

In September 1931 Surya Sen assigned her and Pritilata Waddedar to the European Club operation. She carried out the reconnaissance but was arrested shortly before it took place, and Pritilata led the attack instead. Datta went underground, was present when Surya Sen was taken in February 1933, and escaped; she was arrested on 19 May 1933.

She was tried with Surya Sen and Tarakeswar Dastidar before commissioners appointed under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act and sentenced to transportation for life in a supplementary trial of the armoury raid case. She was released in 1939.

She graduated from Calcutta University in 1940, joined the Communist Party of India, and in 1943 married its general secretary, Puran Chand Joshi. She contested the 1946 Bengal Legislative Assembly election from Chittagong, unsuccessfully. Her memoir, Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences, appeared in English translation in 1945 and remains one of the principal first-hand accounts of the movement. She worked at the Indian Statistical Institute until retirement and died in Calcutta in 1995.

Joined: May 1931
Sentence: Transportation for life; released 1939
Wrote: Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences, 1945

Group three Others in the record

Ramkrishna Biswas

16 January 1910 – 4 August 1931

Member of Surya Sen’s group; executed at Alipore

Born at Saraotali in Chittagong district. With Kalipada Chakrabarty he was assigned to kill Craig, a senior British police official in Chittagong. On 1 December 1930 the attempt killed a railway inspector, Tarini Mukherjee, instead. Both men were arrested the following day.

Biswas was hanged at Alipore Jail in Calcutta on 4 August 1931, aged twenty-one. Pritilata Waddedar visited him in prison some forty times before his execution, using an assumed identity; a photograph of him was among the possessions found on her when she died the following year.

Arrested: 2 December 1930
Outcome: Executed at Alipore Jail, 4 August 1931

Harigopal Bal

died 22 April 1930 · known as “Tegra”

Killed at Jalalabad hill

Younger brother of Lokenath Bal, who was commanding the revolutionaries on the hill. He was among the twelve killed in the engagement with British forces at Jalalabad on 22 April 1930, four days after the raid.

His death is one of the reasons Jalalabad occupies the place it does in accounts of the uprising: the fighting was not an abstraction to the people involved but a family loss inside a small district network.

Outcome: Killed at Jalalabad hill, 22 April 1930

Apurba Sen

died 13 June 1932

Killed at Dhalghat alongside Nirmal Sen

Present at the Dhalghat meeting on 13 June 1932 when the house was surrounded by a party under Captain Cameron. Apurba Sen and Nirmal Sen were both killed in the encounter while covering the escape of Surya Sen, Pritilata Waddedar and the others. Some accounts credit Apurba Sen rather than Nirmal Sen with the shot that killed Cameron; the record does not settle the question.

Outcome: Killed at Dhalghat, 13 June 1932

Jiban Ghoshal

died 1 September 1930 · known as “Makhan”

Killed in the Chandernagore raid

He escaped from Chittagong after the raid together with Ganesh Ghosh and Ananta Singh, and sheltered at Chandernagore, then under French administration and outside British police jurisdiction. When the safe house was raided on 1 September 1930 he was killed and Ganesh Ghosh was arrested.

Outcome: Killed at Chandernagore, 1 September 1930

Satish Chandra Chakrabarti

active 1916, Berhampore

The teacher who recruited Surya Sen

A teacher at Berhampore College in Murshidabad. In 1916 he introduced Surya Sen, then an undergraduate, to nationalist politics and to the revolutionary underground. Every subsequent event on this site follows from that introduction.

He is included here because the recruitment is documented and because it shows the mechanism by which the Bengali revolutionary societies grew: through teachers, inside colleges, one student at a time. Surya Sen would later apply the same method in Chittagong.

Role: Introduced Surya Sen to revolutionary politics, 1916

Netra Sen

died 1933

The informer

He informed the police of Surya Sen’s whereabouts, leading to the arrest of 16 February 1933. He was killed by revolutionaries before the reward money reached him.

He is listed here because a directory of a movement that omits the person who destroyed it is not a record but a memorial. The pursuit and killing of an informer was itself part of how the underground operated, and this archive does not present it as heroic.

Role: Informed on Surya Sen, February 1933
Outcome: Killed by revolutionaries in 1933