On this day Badal Gupta, Dinesh Gupta and Benoy Basu, remembered now as Benoy-Badal-Dinesh, entered Writers’ Building and shot dead Lt Col N.S. Simpson, inspector-general of prisons, whom they had targeted for his torture of prisoners.
Benoy, Badal and Dinesh were members of Bengal Volunteers, a group started by Subhas Chandra Bose, which formed into a revolutionary organisation with a view to assassinating certain British officials.
On December 8, the three had entered the Writers’ Building in European clothes. After Simpson was killed, the police started firing at them and they were overpowered. But they would not be arrested. Badal consumed potassium cyanide, while Benoy and Dinesh shot themselves with their own revolvers. Badal died on the spot. Benoy died at a hospital on December 13. Dinesh survived the severe injury and was convicted and hanged on July 7, 1931, at Alipore jail.
The Writers’ Building strike by the three remains one of the most significant episodes of the Indian freedom struggle.
After independence, Dalhousie Square was renamed BBD Bag after the three, and a plaque was inserted on the wall of Writers’.