Khudiram Bose

Khudiram Bose (also spelled Khudiram Basu) (3 December 1889 – 11 August 1908) was an Indian nationalist from Bengal Presidency who opposed British rule of India. For his role in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case, along with Prafulla Chaki, he was sentenced to death, for the attempted assassination of a British judge, Magistrate Douglas Kingsford, by throwing bombs on the carriage they suspected the man was in. Magistrate Kingsford, however, was seated in a different carriage, and the throwing of bombs resulted in the deaths of two British women. Prafulla fatally shot himself before the arrest. Khudiram was arrested and tried for the murder of the two women, ultimately being sentenced to death. He was one of the first Indian revolutionaries in Bengal to be executed by the British.

Mahatma Gandhi, then in South Africa, denounced the violence in his newspaper Indian Opinion (dated May 9, 1908), lamenting the deaths of the two innocent British women killed in the Muzaffarpur bombing. He stated: “The Indian people will not win their freedom through these methods”." Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in his newspaper Kesari, defended the two young men and called for immediate swaraj. This was followed by the immediate arrest of Tilak by the British colonial government on charges of sedition.