GUWAHATI, Jan 29 - Maniram Dewan Trust, a social service organisation formed to commemorate the monumental contributions of Assam�s most illustrious martyr who was hanged by British rulers in 1858, has criticised the perfunctory manner in which writers of modern Indian history as well as the managers of the Government of India archives treated the great martyr for the last 158 years.
The president of the trust, DN Chakravartty, in a letter addressed to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, drew his attention to the erroneous inscription of Maniram Dewan�s name on the third storey wall of the cellular jail in the Andamans along with the names of four other gallant patriots of Assam who fought against the British in the historic Sepoy revolution.
Chakravartty pointed out that while Maniram Dewan was hanged on February 26, 1858, the ship named Semiramis carrying 200 prisoners, along with four prisoners of Assam, left Calcutta on March 8, 1858, and reached Port Blair on March 10 in the same year.
Although several attempts were made to draw the attention of the cellular jail authorities to delete the name of Maniram Dewan from among the prisoners transported to the Andamans, the faulty inscription on the wall of the cellular jail has not yet been corrected.
Chakravartty requested the Home Minister to instruct the director of the Andamans cellular jail to rectify the error in respect of one of the brightest chapters of India�s freedom movement.
It may be mentioned that this error was first pointed out by an advocate, Akdus Ali Mir, a great grandson of freedom fighter Bahadur Gaonburha, in a letter to the director of the cellular jail, while former Chief Secretary of Assam Harendranath Das also wrote a couple of articles in Assamese and English, drawing public attention to the grievous error on the walls of the cellular jail.
