Indian revolutionary Ananta Singh, who took part in the Chittagong armoury raid, was born on this day. His life was controversial throughout.
Singh was born in Chittagong. His ancestors were Rajputs from Agra. He met Surya Sen, the revolutionary who planned the raid, when he was a school student.
In December 1923, after an attempt to rob the treasury office of Assam Bengal Railway, he was arrested in Kolkata but released. In 1924, he would be imprisoned for four years. When he was freed, he started a gymnasium where he recruited youths for Sen’s campaigns. Singh was among those who led the Chittagong armoury raid on April 18, 1930. He escaped, but on learning of the torture of his fellow revolutionaries by the police, he surrendered to the police and was transported to the Cellular Jail in Port Blair. He was released in 1946.
In prison, he had been influenced by Marxist thought. In the 60s, he founded a far-Left political organisation called Revolutionary Communist Council of India in Kolkata. The members of this group were accused of conducting several bank robberies in Kolkata to buy weapons. In 1969, Singh and other members of the group were finally arrested from their forest hideout near Jaduguda, now in Jharkhand. He was in jail till 1977. He died soon after his release.
His autobiography is titled Keu Bale Dakat, Keu Bale Biplabi (Some call me a bandit, some a revolutionary). He had produced the very popular Bengali film Jamalaye Jibanta Manush (1958), featuring the actor Bhanu Bandyopadhyay.