Chittagong armoury raid
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The Chittagong armoury raid was an attempt on April 18, 1930 to raid the armoury of police and auxiliary forces from the Chittagong armoury in Bangladesh, then a part of undivided British India, by revolutionary freedom fighters led by Surya Sen.
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[edit] The raiders
The raiders were members of revolutionary groups believing in armed uprisings for Indian independence. The leader was Masterda Surya Sen. Apart from Surya Sen, the group included Ganesh Ghosh, Lokenath Baul, Nirmal Sen, Ambika Chakrobarty, Naresh Roy, Sasanka Datta, Ardhendu Dastidar, Harigopal Baul, Tarakeswar Dastidar, Ananta Singh, Jiban Ghoshal, Anand Gupta, Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Dutta. Also among them was 14-year-old Subodh Roy, who died at age 90 on Aug. 27, 2006. He too was jailed in the Andaman Island but released in 1940 when he joined the Communist Party of India, later CPI (Marxist). A CPI (M) press release issued after his death said: "Comrade Subodh Roy made a major scholarly contribution to the history of the communist movement. After painstaking research in the National Archives, he edited a book 'Communism in India: Unpublished Documents.'"
[edit] The plan
Surya Sen prepared the strategy of capturing the two main armouries in Chittagong and then to destroy the telegraph and telephone office, to assassinate members of the "Europeans Club", the majority of whom were government or military officials involved in maintaining British Raj in India, to capture gun shops and to disrupt railway lines.
[edit] The raid
As per plan, the armouries of the police and the Auxiliary Force were attacked and the revolutionaries were able to capture a sizable quantity of arms and ammunition on April 18, 1930. They fled and went underground. However, police continued their search.
[edit] Aftermath
After a few days, the police traced some of the revolutionaries. The "terrorists" were surrounded by several thousand troops while taking shelter in Jalalabad hills on the outskirts of Chittagong.
12 of the revolutionaries were killed in the ensuing gunfight. Some others escaped and a few of the rebels fled to Calcutta, while some rebels were arrested in Chittagong.
Many of the rebels managed to reorganize the broken group. On 24 September 1932, eight young rebels led by Pritilata Waddedar attacked the European Club. During 1930-32 , 22 officials and 220 non- officials were killed by the revolutionarists in separate incidents.
[edit] The armoury raid cases
The first armoury raid case concluded in January 1932 and the verdict was deportation for life for 12, three years' imprisonment for 2 and the rest of a total of 32 person under trial were acquitted.
[edit] Capture of Surya Sen
The Chittagong revolutionaries succumbed a fatal blow when Masterda Surya Sen was arrested on February 17, 1933 thanks to a tip-off from a traitor in the group.He was tried and was hanged on January 8, 1934.
