Manoranjan Banerjee(1901-1981) was a compatriot of Bhabaniprasad Bhattacharyya and Ravi Banerjee, who tried to assassinate Mr. Anderson at the Darjeeling Racecourse on 8 May 1934, but missed the target. Nothing is known about Manoranjan’s parentage, place of birth, early life, education and his political association.
In 1934, Governor General John Anderson formed village guards with ruffians to track the movement of the local youth that forced the BV members to go underground. They lost their friend Matilal Mallik; hence they decided to eliminate him. But, accessing the governor in Calcutta was difficult after the abortive attempt on his life in the Calcutta University convocation. Hence, they decided to target him during his Darjeeling tour in the month of May.
Bhabaniprasad and Ravi were chosen for the job, but they could not carry revolvers as all the passengers on board the Darjeeling Mail were physically frisked; but not the ladies. Hence, BV members Manoranjan and Ujjwala Majumdar traveled like husband and wife with revolvers concealed in a harmonium. Ujjwala took the revolvers inside the race course, handed them over to the duo, and left. Bhabaniprasad and Ravi were seized at the place of occurrence, and the rest later.
On 12 September 1934, the Special Tribunal sentenced Manoranjan to death; but the sentence was later on transmuted to life imprisonment and transmigration by the Calcutta High Court (3 December 1934).
Source: Nihar Roy, Biplabi: Jader Mane Rakhini, 2021, in Bengali; Kalicharan Ghosh, Jagaran O Bisforan, 1380 BS, in Bengali; Subodhchandra Sengupta Ed., Samsad Bangali Charitabhidhan, 1976, in Bengali; Shubhendu Majumdar, Agniyuger Abhidhan, 2022, in Bengali.