Saroj Dutta: Difference between revisions

{{Infobox officeholder  

| name = Saroj Dutta<br /><big>{{lang|bn|সরোজ দত্ত}}</big>

| image = Image:Kolkata Saroj Dutta statue.jpg

| caption = Bust of Saroj Dutta at [[Esplanade, Kolkata]].

| birth_date = 13 March 1914

|birth_place  = [[Jessore (city)|Jessore]], [[East Bengal]]

| death_date   = 5 August 1971 (aged 57)

|death_place  = [[South Calcutta]], [[West Bengal]]

| nationality = Indian

| spouse = Bela Dutta  

| children = Siraj Dutta(elder son)

Kunal Dutta(younger son)

| party = [[Communist Party of India]] (1949-1964)

[[Communist Party of India (Marxist)]] (1964-1967)

[[Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)]] (1969-1971)

| alma_mater = [[University of Calcutta]]

| profession = Politician, [[Poet]], [[Journalist]]

| website =

| footnotes =  

'''Saroj Dutta''' (March 13, 1914 – August 5, 1971) (Comrade SD) was an Indian communist intellectual and poet, active in the extremist [[Naxalite]] movement in [[West Bengal]] in the 1960s. He also remained editor-in-chief of the ''[[Amrita Bazar Patrika]]'' during the 1940s.<ref name=prakash>{{cite book | title = The Naxalite Movement in India | author =     Prakash Singh | publisher =   Rupa Publications | year = 2006 | isbn = 8171672949}}Appendix B</ref>

It is commonly thought that he was killed in a police encounter on August 5, 1971 but till now he was missing in police and state records<ref name=mint>{{cite web|title = The remains of Naxalbari|publisher=Livemint | url = http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/qILQtLkiUnpvkRP9v3aV3O/The-remains-of-Naxalbari.html |author=Shamanth Rao|date=March 10, 2011| access-date = 2014-02-26 }}</ref><ref name="Ghosh1993"/>

Police Arrested Dutta from his friend Debiprasad Chattapadhyaya's home on the night of August 4–5, 1971. It is stated that he was killed by the [[Kolkata Police]] on the [[Aryan Club]] grounds in the [[Maidan (Kolkata)]] that very morning.<ref name="dnaindia">{{cite web|url=http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/main-article-countering-the-maoists-1408542|title=Countering the Maoists|work=DNA|date=12 July 2010|location=India|access-date=2014-02-24}}</ref> It is also said that the movie star [[Uttam Kumar]] witnessed the shooting while on a morning walk, but talked about it much later when drunk; this is the storyline of the 1994 Bengali-language movie ''[[Sopan (film)|Sopan]]''.<ref name="Ghosh1993">{{cite book|author=Suniti Kumar Ghosh|title=The Historic Turning-point: A Liberation Anthology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6l3lAAAAMAAJ|year=1993|page=135|publisher=S.K. Ghosh}}</ref><ref name="indiancine">{{cite web|url=https://wiki.indiancine.ma/wiki/Sopan|title=Sopan – Indiancine.ma Wiki|publisher=wiki.indiancine.ma|access-date=2014-02-24}}</ref> Bengali writer Dibyandu Palit also portrayed the incident in his novel 'Sahajoddha'.

A feature-length documentary film, S.D. : Saroj Dutta and His Times, directed by Kasturi Basu and Mitali Biswas in 2018, featured Saroj Dutta's journey as a poet, journalist, translator, ideologue and revolutionary. The film contains the only on-camera interviews of two eyewitnesses - Debiprasad Chattopadhyay and Manjusha Chattopadhyay - of Saroj Dutta's abduction and disappearance by the Kolkata Police.