Unsung Heroes Detail

Originally a member of the Anushilan Samiti, Jatindra Mohan Sengupta became a Barrister-at-Law. He left his lucrative legal practice to take part in the Non-Cooperation movement in 1921. He organized and led the strike by employees of the East Bengal Railways and provided funds for the striking railway workers. Directly involved with the Satyagrahi laborers of tea estates in Chandpur, he was arrested in 1921 but released soon after. He succeeded Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das as the president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee and also as the Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation in 1925. Sengupta was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council in 1926 and went to Burma in February 1930 and addressed a public meeting at Rangoon. He was arrested on 14 March 1930 on the charge of inciting people against the Government and opposing the separation of Burma from India and was taken into police custody in Rangoon. Tried and acquitted, he returned to Calcutta and took an active part in the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Arrested and detained several times, he started a non-official inquiry into the atrocities committed on the people of Chittagong, following the raid on the Chittagong Armoury in April 1930. He went to London in October 1931 to attend the Round Table Conference and placed his inquiry report before it. Returning to India by an Italian ship, he was arrested aboard the ship near Bombay on 20th January 1932 and thereafter detained in the Yeravada Jail, Poona. Transferred to Darjeeling, his health began suffering due to ill-treatment and solitary confinement. He was brought to Alipore Central Jail and then interned in Ranchi, where only his wife(Shrimati Nellie Sengupta), was allowed to attend to him. Seriously ill with heart disease, Jatindra Mohan, lovingly addressed by his countrymen as Deshapriya, died in internment in Ranchi on 23 July 1933.