Khudiram Bose - Trial, Sentencing and Martyrdom

Trial, Sentencing and Martyrdom

The historical trial started on 21 May 1908. The Judge was Mr. Corndoff and two Indians, Nathuniprasad and Janakprasad, were appointed as jury. Along with Khudiram, two others were tried for assisting the boys in their mission—Mrityunjay Chakraborty and Kishorimohan Bandopadhyay, who had accommodated Khudiram and Prafulla in his dharmashala for their mission. The first man died during the trial, and subsequently the trail of Sri Kishorimohan was separated from that of Khudiram.

Mr. Mannuk and an Indian named Binodbihari Majumdar became the prosecutors for the British government, while eminent lawyers Kalidas Basu, Upendranath Sen and Kshetranath Bandopadhyay took up Khudiram's defense. They were joined later in the trial by Kulkamal Sen, Narendranath Lahiri and Satischandra Chakraborty—all of them fighting the case without any fees.

On 23 May, Khudiram was again required to give a statement for the second time after his Muzaffarpur statement to magistrate E.W. Bredhowd. Prafulla was dead—it was not a question any longer of saving or not saving him. But if Khudiram lived, he figured he could do much more with his life by way of serving his motherland. Under the guidance of his lawyers, Khudiram submitted a new statement denying any involvement or responsibility in any aspect or stage of the entire mission and operation down to the bombing. On 13 June, the scheduled date for the verdict and sentence, the judge and the prosecutors received and anonymous letter of warning, which told them that there was one more bomb coming for them from Kolkata, and that henceforth it will be the Biharis, and not the Bengalis, who are going to kill them. On the other hand, that made the defense lawyers more confident, that it was proof that there could be other masterminds and executors of the Muzaffarpur bombing other than Khudiram, and that along with Khudiram's age, should make the judge deliver a sentencing other than death. But as was throughout the British Raj, and throughout the period of armed revolution, the British did not entertain any option of letting go any dangerous revolutionary, once they had him. The Judge pronounced the death sentence for Khudiram.

Khudiram's immediate and spontaneous response was to smile. The judge, surprised, asked Khudiram whether he had understood the meaning of the sentence that was just pronounced. Khudiram replied that he surely had. When the judge asked him again whether he had anything to say, in front of a packed audience, Khudiram replied with same smile that if he could be given some time, he could teach the judge the skill of bomb-making. By then the Judge was instructing the police to escort the boy out of the courtroom.

As per the legal system, Kudiram had 7 days time to appeal to the High Court. Khudiram refused to make appeal. He was by then on a different mental plane, and was fully prepared to embrace his destiny. However after some persuasion by his counsellors—with the logic that if he receives a life sentence instead of getting hanged because of this appeal, he would live to serve his nation once free and he would have age on his side when that happens—Khudiram finally agreed, in a detached manner to go along with his defense team.

The High Court hearing took place on 8 July. Narendrakumar Basu came to Khudiram's defense, and concentrated all his legal skills and experience on this case to save the precious life of a boy who had overnight become a wonder and a hero for the whole country. He challenged the verdict of the session court by saying that the judging was not according to law and was flawed. He reasoned that according to article 164 of the penal code, the accused is required to submit his statement in front of a first class magistrate (which Mr. Woodman) was not, and moreover during the first statement Khudiram was not told anything of the person's identity and position. Secondly, pointed out Basu, the article 364 requires that all questions to the accused be made in the mother tongue of the same, and all answers from the accused in his mother tongue be documented verbatim in that language, but which was done in English in Khudiram's case. Moreover, Khudiram's signature was required to be given on the statement on the same date and at the time of the statement in the presence of the magistrate, but in reality Khudiram was made to sign the day after, and in front of a different person, who was an additional magistrate. Lastly, since such a statement are by definition required to be totally voluntary, with the magistrate being sure that it was so, there was no proof that Khudiram was allowed to give a voluntary statement without any direct or indirect manipulation after his capture. Lastly Narendrakumar Basu said that Prafulla aka "Dinesh" (the name used in the trial) was stronger than Khudiram was, and he was the bomb-expert among the two of them, thus it is highly likely that the actual thrower of the bomb was "Dinesh". Further Prafulla's suicide on the verge of capture only reinforces the possibility of his being the actual thrower of the bombs. After the defense, it was announced by the two British judges that the final verdict will be passed on the 13th of July.

Since Khudiram was the only of the two alive, and since therefore only his lone statement of a two-man team was the foundation for the entire case, and since all the points By Narendrakumar Basu were technically correct, it was hoped that, for the sake of the law—about which the British prided themselves ad infinitum—Khudiram's life would at least be spared.

But on the historical day, the British judges, representing an entire colonial government who had already made decided what to do, allowed a farce of a trail to go on for several hours. At the end, turning a blind eye to their own law, they passed the sentence that they had decided on before that day started.

As a final attempt, an appeal was made to the Governor General to overrule a death sentence for Khudiram. But the appeal was summarily turned down—the British was not going to let an Indian like that get way. On the contrary, the order came to carry out the death sentence latest by 11 August 1908. Kolkata erupted in intense protest from the entire student community. The streets of Kolkata started to be choked up with processions all at the same time, for several days.

On 11 August, the region around the prison became packed with a swelling crowd before it was 6 am—the scheduled time. People holding flower garlands filled up the front rows of the crowd. Upendranath Sen, the lawyer-journalist of the Bengali news daily "Bengali", who was close to Khudiram, reports having reached the venue by 5 am, in a car with all the necessary funerary arrangements and clothes. After the hanging, the funeral procession went through Kolkata, with police guards holding back the crowd all along the central artery street. The people kept throwing their flowers on the body as the carriage passed by.

The Amritabazar Patrika, one of the prominent dailies of that era, carried the story of the hanging the next day, on 12 August. Under the headline "Khudiram's End: Died cheerful and smiling" the newspaper wrote: "Khudiram's execution took place at 6 a.m. this morning. He walked to the gallows firmly and cheerfully and even smiled when the cap was drawn over his head." An established British newspaper, The Empire, wrote: "Khudiram Bose was executed this morning...It is alleged that he mounted the scaffold with his body erect. He was cheerful and smiling." The Bengali poet Kazi Nazrul Islam wrote a poem to honor him. Soon after, practically a "competition" among the youth of Bengal began, to kill Britishers and embrace martyrdom.