Short Note on Chapekar Brothers

Chapekar Brothers continued the revolutionary activities in Maharashtra in order to pressurize the British Government to leave India. They were Damodar, Vasudev and Balkrishna, the three brothers who founded the Hindu dharma Sanrakshini Sabha in 1894 and carried out various activities in and around Pune area. In the same year, they circulated pamphlets and leaflets during the Ganesh festival and motivated the people to rise in arms against the British as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj had done against the Mughal emperor. Poona and neighboring area came under the dreaded disease known as plague in 1897, which killed several thousand people. The British Government established committee known as Plague Relief Committee under the charge of W. C. Rand, a headstrong British officer, who troubled people and violated their secrecy of life instead of providing them relief. He became so unpopular that Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar to teachhim a lesson and they shot W. C. Rand and Lieutenant C. E. Ayerst when they were returning back house from attending the sixtieth anniversary of the caronation of Queen Victoria on 22 June, 1897. in order to remove the evidence Vasudev, the younger brother of Damodar and his friend Ranade assassinated Ramchandra and Ganesh the two approvers in the case of Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar during their prosecutions. Finally, Chapekar brothers and Ranade were arrested, tried and sentenced to death, which created much indignation all over India. This incident brought in the chain of revolutionary activities through out Maharashtra.