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P.P.Doctorjee was very closely linked to the revolutionary freedom fighters
who ceaselessly worked for India’s Independence. Very little is known of his
work from those days. This is one of those incidents. P.P.Doctorjee closed
out all his revolutionary work prior to starting the Sangha.
In 1915, just as the First World War was heating up, some revolutionaries led
by Shri Nanaji Puranik, got a hot “inside” tip from a fellow worker that, a
railroad car full of firearms and ammunition was reaching Nagpur, with the
daily train from Kolkatta. It was then attached to the Mumbai (Bombay) bound
train, and sent on. Shri Nanaji and his cohorts’ decided upon a daring plan
to steal a large container full of rifles and ammunition. They went to
P.P.Doctorjee and Dr. Moonje, and explained the idea and sought their
blessings.
P.P.Doctorjee and Dr. Moonje, thought that the idea was extremely risky. If
it went awry, the whole gruop of revolutionaries could be arrested, tortured
and killed by the ruling British junta. They warned the young revolutionaries
in no uncertain terms. But the young revolutionaries were adamant.
So, P.P.Doctorjee agreed to help. He had observed that every day, the
switchover of the arms-car was happening smoothly, and the authorities had
become lax in security. A guard had joined the revolutionaries.
On the day of the heist, Shri Nanaji arrived in a horse-drawn carriage to the
train station. He was dressed impeccably in the uniform of a police officer.
His cohorts were also dressed as his subordinate police constables. In the
earshot of the security guards, this “police officer” ordered his “police
constables” to remove the container (containing the arms and the ammunition)
and load it onto the horse-drawn carriage. Practiced hand accomplished the
transfer smoothly and quickly; and the whole group left the train station
within minutes. They reached a pre-determined “safe” house, quickly
re-dressed in their normal attire, divided and distributed the armaments into
innocuous smaller boxes, and went away. All police uniforms were burnt to
ashes and were flushed down into the sewers. No evidence of the heist was
left behind.
Later, when the security guards and the British authorities discovered that
they had been duped, they were furious. A full-scale investigation went on
for months, to no avail. P.P.Doctorjee’s meticulous planning became eminently
successful. The revolutionaries got what they wanted, without a single
person’s arrest.
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