As soon as the blanket was carefully removed, what did we see - language is wanting to describe the lovely beauty of the ascetic Kanai - his long hair fell in a mass on his broad forehead, the half-closed eyes were still drowsy as though from a test of nectar, the living lines of resolution were manifest in the firmly closed lips, the hands reaching to the knees were closed in fists. It was wonderful! Nowhere on Kanai's limbs did we find any ugly wrinkle showing the pain of death. [Motilal Roy]

The vivid memory of the death of Kanailal Dutta, almost fifteen years after the event, in a memoir by Motilal Roy, serves to demonstrate the fury of public emotion unleashed at the time the incident actually occurred. Motilal Roy, Purna Chandra Dey, Sagar Kali Ghosh & Ashutosh Dutta (Kanailal’s elder brother), had gone to receive his dead body from jail, at which one of the police officials is said to have remarked, “How many boys like this do you have in your country?” As soon as Kanailal’s body was carried out of the Alipore Jail, thousands of people waiting outside raised the slogan of ‘Jai Kanai’ & continued to do so continuously even as the body burnt on the pyre at Keoratala Burning Ghat in Calcutta. The roads were blocked & the mighty British police could do nothing to control the crowds. Their records state that about ten thousand people had gathered in the streets of Calcutta itself & more than a lakh took part in processions throughout the country. People expressed their grief by fasting that day. The British police were taken aback by the public backlash & hence decided not to hand over the body of Satyendranath Bose, who was hanged a few days later, but instead arranged for the cremation under strict police supervision, which became the norm in case of future executions too. In death, Kanailal had achieved his goal. It was his ardent wish that instead of grieving in private, his body should be carried out in a public procession to inspire people & teach the British a lesson. Both of his wishes were quite evidently fulfilled. A stampede occurred to collect the ashes of Kanailal & packets of ashes were sold, to which Mr. F. C. Daley, a high-ranking British police official had remarked, “The stuff which was sold in the name of Kanailal Dutta’s ashes was apparently fifty times the real amount of the ashes found at the crematorium!”

The murder of Narendranath Goswami or ‘Gosai’ as he was referred to in derogatory terms, on 31 August, 1908, was cinematic to say the least. Kanailal & Satyendranath had got themselves admitted to the jail hospital on the pretext of illness, with the intention of murdering Narendranath, a detainee-turned-traitor who had betrayed them & turned Approver to the British & was himself lodged in the hospital under police protection. Narendranath was from Serampore & he obviously knew everything about the plan of the revolutionaries at Chandernagore & Calcutta. The British police had sprung into action after the Muzaffarpur Bomb Attack (30 April, 1908) & arrested thirty-three revolutionaries in Bengal alone (2 May, 1908), for waging war against the government. Kanailal was also arrested on that day & detained at Alipore Jail. On that very day, a bomb factory with a huge cache of arms & revolutionary literature was discovered at Murari Pukur Road in Calcutta. The police started rounding up the suspects of the now famous Alipore Bomb Case, quite big ones included, after Narendranath started divulging names – Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barin Ghosh, Ullaskar Dutta, Shanti Ghosh, Subodh Chandra Mallick & mentioned the name of Charu Chandra Roy as the leader of the ‘Chandernagore Gang’- he was now doomed to die. According to eye-witnesses, as soon as Satyendranath saw Narendranath in front of his hospital bed, he brought out the revolver hidden under the pillow & fired. But he missed his target. Narendranath immediately realized the situation & called out to Higgins, who was in duty in front of the room. Meanwhile Kanailal had fired & the bullet had pierced Gosai’s back, even as he tried to flee. Kanailal & Satyendranath ran through the corridors of the Alipore Central Jail Hospital, in hot pursuit of the man. At one point, Higgins managed to grapple Satyendranath, but was dealt with a fierce kick on his lower abdomen by Kanailal. As he fell to the ground, the pursuit of Narendranath continued, with Kanailal continuously firing, until Narendranath fell into a drain – he still had two bullets left & he pumped them into his body. Then Kanailal turned around & told the police, “Arrest me”. Despite knowing that a sentence by hanging was inevitable, Kanailal refused to appeal for mercy, “There SHALL be no Appeal”. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy had remarked, “Kanai has taught us the proper use of SHALL & WILL”. Kanailal never divulged how they managed to smuggle the revolvers into such a high security prison. He is only said to have humourously remarked that the ghost of Khudiram Bose had come to hand-over the revolvers to them. Kanailal was sentenced to death on 21 October, 1908 & went to the gallows on 10 November,1908, at about seven in the morning, smilingly, with his high-powered spectacles properly in place, lest he should falter in his steps. Just before his hanging, he gave the spectacles to the attending policeman & told him to give them to his elder brother, who had asked for them. Thus, after Khudiram Bose, who was hanged on 11 August, 1908, for his active role in the Muzaffarpur Conspiracy Case, Kanailal became the second martyr closely followed by Satyendranath on 21 November, 1908.

The nondescript house by the G.T. Road at Chandernagore, would fail to attract anybody’s notice, until its proper historical perspective is known. It is the house of Kanailal’s maternal grandparents, the very house where he was born in on 31 August, 1888 & spent the major portion of his life in. The school he went to, previously called College de Dupleix, has been renamed as Kanailal Vidyamandir. It was here in Chandernagore that Kanailal had met Charu Chandra Roy, who had inspired him to participate in the agitations against the Partition of Bengal in 1905, & had included him in the ‘Chandernagore Gang’, as the group was referred to later by Charles Tegart. He also developed an association with the Gondolpara Group, led by Srish Chandra Ghosh, from whom he learnt the use of firearms. It was in 1908 that Kanailal went to Calcutta & joined the revolutionary group ‘Jugantar’ very secretly, as it was initially unknown even to his mentor Charu Chandra Roy. The subsequent events unfolded quite rapidly & Kanailal emerged victorious as the martyr who had achieved in his short life, what a person with a normal lifespan could only dream of. As for the memorial booklet published fifteen years later by Motilal Roy, from the French territory of Chandernagore – it was immediately banned by the British under Sea Customs Act (1878), which prohibited any ‘objectionable materials’ from being transported into British territories.