The teenage revolutionary who disguised himself as a woman to strike the Viceroy

Cultures · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 1912, a seventeen-year-old student abandoned his studies to master the art of bomb-making. Under the tutelage of legendary revolutionaries, he executed a daring rooftop attack in Delhi, using a feminine disguise to vanish into the crowd and strike a blow against the British Raj.

Born in 1895 to an aristocratic Bengali Hindu family in Nadia, Basanta Kumar Biswas was part of a lineage of resistance. His grand uncle, Digambar Biswas, had famously led the 1859 Indigo revolt against forced cash-crop cultivation. By the early 20th century, the young Biswas had transitioned from a student in Muragacha to a trained operative within the Jugantar group, an organization known for its militant approach to Indian independence.

The defining moment of his life occurred on 23 December 1912, during the inauguration of Delhi as India's capital. To target Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy of India, Biswas adopted a striking persona. Dressed in women's clothing and introducing himself to onlookers as 'Lakshmina'—a reference to the Rani of Jhansi—he waited on a rooftop overlooking the parade route in Chandni Chowk. As the procession passed, a bomb was deployed, exploding behind the Viceroy. The blast seriously injured Hardinge and killed a servant, after which Biswas shed his saree and escaped into the streets.

The aftermath of the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy was marked by intense investigation and a high-stakes trial. While some co-conspirators faced death sentences, the seventeen-year-old Biswas was initially sentenced to life imprisonment. However, following an appeal by the Crown at the Lahore High Court, his sentence was overturned to death. On 11 May 1915, at the age of just twenty, he was hanged at Ambala Central Jail, becoming one of the youngest figures executed during the 20th-century Indian revolutionary struggle.

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