In news– Recently, the Chief Minister of Bihar has said that February 15 would henceforth be commemorated as “Shahid Diwas” in memory of the 34 freedom fighters who were killed by police in Tarapur town in 1932.
History Tarapur massacre-
- The trigger for the protest was the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru in Lahore on March 23, 1931, which sent a wave of grief and anger around the country.
- Another one is the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi following the collapse of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in early 1932, and then Congress was declared an illegal organization, and Nehru, Patel, and Rajendra Prasad were also thrown in jail.
- There were two centres of activity for the freedom fighters in Munger: Dhol Pahadi near Tarapur, and Supaur-Jamua village in Sangrampur.
- A call given by the Congress leader Sardar Shardul Singh Kavishwar to raise the tricolour over government buildings resonated in Tarapur.
- A group of young freedom fighters planned to hoist an Indian national flag at Thana Bhawan in Tarapur on February 15, 1932.
- Police were aware of the plan, and several officers were present at the spot.
- Around 2 pm, even as the police carried out a brutal lathicharge, a 4,000-strong crowd pelted the police with stones, injuring an officer of the civil administration.
- The police responded by opening indiscriminate fire on the crowd.
- After about 75 rounds were fired, 34 bodies were found at the spot, even though there were claims of an even larger number of deaths.
- This massacre was the biggest carried out by the British police after the one in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919.
Source: Indian Express
