BARDHAMAN Rly Station Will Be Named After Batukeshwar Dutta

The Bardhhaman railway station in West Bengal will be named after revolutionary freedom fighter Batukeshwar Dutt, who was born in that district but later made the Bihar capital his home, Union minister Nityanand Rai said in Patna.Nityanand Rai, Minister of State for Home and the Bihar BJP chief, made a statement to this effect on Saturday after visiting the house where Batukeshwar Dutt stayed with his wife Anjali after Independence. She taught in a noted girls’ school. The Union minister visited the house in Jakkanpur locality along with BJP national vice president Shivraj Singh Chouhan on the occasion of the death anniversary of the freedom fighter where they also met his daughter Bharti Bagchi. She is the only surviving family member of the revolutionary.   A posh colony named after the revolutionary is situated close to AIIMS at New Delhi where Batukeshwar Dutt breathed his last in 1965.Born in a village of Bardhhaman district in 1910, he became associated with the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association which was headed by Chandrasekhar Azad and he accompanied Bhagat Singh to the national assembly in Delhi where they courted arrest after throwing bombs and throwing revolutionary pamphlets on   8 April 1929 and chanting “Inquilab zindabad”. He was then 18 years old. Bhagat Singh, who was also an accused in the murder of a British police official, was hanged to death, Batukeshar Dutt was sentenced for life and deported to a jail in Andaman and Nicobar islands. Batukeshwar Dutt — also known as B. K. Dutt, Battu, and Mohan, was a son of Goshtha Bihari Dutt. He was born on 18 November 1910 in Oari village, Purba Bardhaman district..He graduated from P. P. N. High School in Kanpur. He was a close associate of freedom fighters Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagwat Singh. He had first met Bhagwat Singh at Kanpur in 1924. He learned basics of bomb-making while working for the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) there. After release from jail due to tuberculosis, he faced poverty and was compelled to start transport business for livelihood. Dutt outlived all his comrades and died on 20 July 1965 in the AIIMS after prolonged illness. He was cremated in Hussainiwala near Ferozepur in Punjab where mortal remains of his comrades Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were also consigned to flames. Incidentally, Bardhhaman    railway junction station opened in 1855 is on the Howrah-Delhi main line and is located in Purba Bardhhaman district . EMU services from Howrah along Howrah-Bardhhaman main line and Howrah-Bardhhaman chord terminate at Bardhhaman (edited by Pranab Kumar Chakravarty)