Calcutta: There has been a sensational event in the history of India which has gained worldwide fame, in which a half-brother used a plague injection to kill his brother, from which he died a very painful death. went.
How did the incident happen?
This is an incident on the afternoon of November 26, 1933. Amrinder Chandra Pandey, 20, of a landed family in Jharkhand, was on his way from Kolkata (Calcutta) to his family land when he was approached by a pistachio-tall stranger at the railway station. At that moment, he felt a sharp needle in his right arm.
Amrinder Pandey understood that someone had bitten him, his relatives advised him to stop and get a blood test, but his ten-year-old half-brother Benoinder, who arrived at the station uninvited, said it was a trivial matter. carry on.
After three days, Amrinder developed a fever. He had to return to Kolkata. During the doctor’s examination, it was found that there was a needle-like mark on his arm. The treatment was started but the disease progressed. The armpits became swollen, and the initial symptoms of lung disease began to appear, then on the night of December 3 he went into a coma and died the next morning.
There were no laboratory reports yet, doctors said the cause of death was pneumonia. When the laboratory reports came, it was revealed that there was a deadly bacterium ‘Yersinia pestis’ in the blood of Amrinder Pandey which causes plague.
Why did the incident happen?
The case had a sensational reputation, as it killed a young man from a wealthy family. Kolkata police launched an investigation and found that the crime was based on a dispute over the family’s wealth. There was a dispute with
The battle was described in the news as a battle of good and evil.
How was the incident plotted?
A police investigation revealed a well-organized plot, finding that the deadly bacteria had been stolen from a Mumbai (Bombay) hospital. According to court documents, the plot to assassinate Amrinder may have been hatched in 1932, when A close friend of Dr. Tara Nath Bhattacharya tried unsuccessfully to steal a sample of the plague-causing bacteria from medical laboratories.
A British medical official, DP Lambert, said Benoinder had made his first attempt to kill his half-brother in 1932. According to Lambert, Benoinder had tried to block the treatment.
Theft of plague bacteria
Benoinder’s friend Dr. Bhattacharya tried at least four times to steal the plague-causing bacteria. In May 1932, Bhattacharya approached the Huffkin Institute in Mumbai to obtain the bacteria, but samples were not provided without the permission of the Surgeon General of Bengal.
In May, Bhattacharya contacted a doctor in Kolkata and claimed that he had discovered a cure for the plague and wanted to test it using bacterial samples, but failed. Then in 1933, Bhattacharya again urged the doctor in Kolkata to write a letter to the director of the Huffkin Institute asking him to allow him to work at the institute to try a cure for the plague.
Benoinder went to Mumbai with Bhattacharya to bribe two veterinary surgeons affiliated with the Huffkin Institute. He also bought rats from the market so that he could present himself as a serious scientist.
Eventually, after the failure, the two went to Arthur Road Infectious Diseases Hospital, where bacterial cultures were kept. They were both allowed to work here. About five days after gaining access to the laboratory, they suddenly left their ‘work’ incomplete. And returned to Kolkata.
Worldwide fame of the event
The sensational murder of a wealthy family caught the attention of people in British India and beyond, calling it a major case of individual-level biological terrorism.
Newspapers and magazines covered the incident extensively, with Time magazine calling it a “murder with germs” or germs, while Singapore’s Street Times called it a “punctured arm mystery.” ۔
Dan Morrison, an American journalist who researched the murder for his book The Prince and the Poisoner, described the train station as “extremely modern.”
Arrest
Police arrested the two in February 1934, three months after the murder. Get store receipts.
Court proceedings
The trial lasted nine months, with the defense attorney saying Amrinder was bitten by a rat-biting fly.
The court found Benoinder and Dr Tara Nath Bhattacharya murderers, saying they had stolen plague germs from a Mumbai hospital, which were brought to Calcutta and could have been kept alive till the day of the murder, and they were hired killers. The court sentenced both of them to death.
However, in January 1936, the Calcutta High Court commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment on the appeal of the convicts.
Hired killer
Even 90 years after the murder at the Calcutta railway station, the killer of the young landlord and the needle used in the murder have not been found.
