01The carriage at Muzaffarpur
He was born at Habibpur near Midnapore and lost both parents as a child. Through his teacher Satyendranath Bose he joined the revolutionary circle in Midnapore during the Swadeshi agitation. Douglas Kingsford, as Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta, had sentenced young Swadeshi workers to flogging, and he was then transferred to Muzaffarpur. The Jugantar group sent Khudiram and Prafulla Chaki to kill him. On the evening of 30 April 1908 they threw a bomb at a carriage leaving the European club. It carried not Kingsford but Mrs Kennedy and her daughter, the wife and daughter of a barrister, and both died.
02Waini station and the gallows
The two separated and fled. Khudiram was caught at Waini railway station the next morning, 1 May; Prafulla Chaki, cornered by police at Mokama, shot himself. Khudiram was tried at Muzaffarpur and hanged in the jail there on 11 August 1908. He was eighteen. In Bengal, weavers wove his name into the borders of dhotis, and the folk song ‘Ekbar biday de Ma ghure ashi’, Mother, bid me farewell once, is still sung for him. Waini station is now named Khudiram Bose Pusa.
