B.B.D. Bagh Kolkata and murder of N.S. Simpson IG of prisons - British Raj

writers building, Kolkata West Bengal India alamy.com/

B.B.D. Bagh, formerly known as  Dalhousie Square,  stands for Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh and  is near the Hooghly River in the western part of central Kolkata. Ii is a square built around the old Lal Dighi tank and has been in existence for a pretty long time. The old fort built by the British was near where the General Post Office now is and the bagh  was in the heart of Kalikata or the White Town in old Calcutta.   It is now part of the central business district in the city and important West Bengal state government offices function here. Simply put it,  it is the seat of political power as in the past under the colonial rule. During the British rule, this vast square with a tank in the middle for public use, (named after the Gov. Gen. of India  Lord Dalhousie - 1847 to 1856), had a row of  buildings occupied by the Civil workers employed by the EIC, including writers / clerks. The Square with nice building enhanced the beauty of Calcutta which was considered the most impressive town in Asia in those by-gone days.

The East India company created the square as the center of it's trading post along the banks of the Hooghly River. The original Fort William stood between the river and the tank (now known as Lal Dighi). Soon after recovering from the so called Black Hole incident during the siege of Ft. William by the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah, Robert Clive who had arrived from Madras reclaimed the city. The Nawab was quite angry, because the EIC kept violating  its trade treaty, besides fortifying 
the settlement without his consent. This led to  confrontation between Nawab's army and the EIC's forces prior to the  Black Hole tragedy which happened to be more of  an accidental one than an incidental one. Soon  within a year or so, the EIC  had taken all of Bengal and Calcutta, along with the square. Thus, Calcutta  was established as the commercial and political hub  of British India. After the British crown directly took over the administration of the Indian subcontinent in 1858 , the Writer's building became the secretariat of the Viceroy of India. A number of corporations and institutions  moved in and opened offices and headquarters in and around the square, making it an important part of the central  business district of the city. Thus, Dalhousie Square became the most influential area of Calcutta in the by-gone days. Though the British India's capital was shifted to Delhi for various administrative reasons in early 1900s, many company offices, head quarters never moved out of Kolkata and stayed very much there.  

Statues of Benoy, Badal and Dinesh,Writers Bldg.wikipedia.org

colonial period. BBD bagh (Dalhousue Square),Wikimapia

Dinesh Gupta, freedom fighter, Bengal wikipedia.org

Benoy Krishna basu, freedom fighter, Bengal wikipedia.org

People from other Indian states to Kolkata, on a visit to B.B.D. Bagh, may not  be aware of what do those three initials B.B.D. stand for. Among the Indian states, Bengal in the late and early 20th century, became the hot bed  of freedom  movements and  countless patriotic freedom fighters wanted  India to be  freed from the oppressive British rule. The initials B.B.D. refer to  three young Indian independence freedom fighters  and revolutionaries — Benoy basu (1908–1930) Badal Gupta (1912–1930)

Badal Gupt, indian patriot., bengal .wikipedia.org

and Dinesh Chandra Gupta (6 December 1911 - 7 July 1931) and these self-motivated youngsters were quite agitated over the way the English company grabbed  India's various regions  one by one through cheating, conceit and betrayal. What infuriated them most was the police brutality against the natives and freedom fighters. As part of plan of "Operation Freedom" against the police repression in Bengal, especially against the inhuman conduct with the political prisoners in different jails, the three wanted to teach a lesson to the British Government. Col N.S. Simpson, the Inspector General of Prisons, was a controversial figure, though he was held in esteem by his coworkers.  he got a reputation for the brutal treatment of the prisoners in the jails. No remorse, nothing of that sort. The revolutionaries' intention was  not only to murder him, but also to strike terror in the British official circles by launching an attack on the Secretariat  - Writers' building. 

Driven by patriotic zeal, the three freedom fighters - Benoy along with Dinesh Gupta and Badal Gupta, wearing  European costume, on  8 December 1930 entered the Writers' Building in Dalhousie Square and   fatally shot dead the Inspector General of Prisons, N.S. Simpson in the balcony. British police immediately responded by started firing and in the ensuing  brief gun fight, some other British officers were injured. At last the police overpowered the three young revolutionaries, who  did not want to be caught and killed. While Badal took potassium cyanide,  Benoy and Dinesh shot themselves with their own revolvers. Benoy was taken to the hospital where he died on 13 December 1930. However, Dinesh survived the near-fatal injury. He was convicted and sentenced to death by judge Mr. Gerlick. He spent his time in Alipore jail  where  he was hanged to death on 7 July 1931. 

The three youngsters' martyrdom and sacrifice of their own lives for the sake of freeing the motherland from the unscrupulous British rule  won the heart of the Bengali people as well as others and they became immortal fingers in the annals of Indian history. The Dalhousie Square was named after them whose acts of heroism inspired a lot of freedom fighters from Bengal and elsewhere. So we won the freedom the hard way. The British took control of united India centuries ago, but finally in August 1947 returned it to us divided -  two countries were born: India and Pakistan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._B._D._Bagh