The Chapekar Brothers: India’s First Assassins of a British Official

Three brothers from a small hamlet near Pune became the first armed revolutionaries in India to assassinate a British official. All three paid for it with their own lives, within two years of each other.

Timeline

• 1869-1880: Damodar Hari, Balkrishna Hari, and Vasudeo Hari Chapekar are born, at Chapa, a hamlet near Pune.
• 1896-97: Bubonic plague strikes Pune. British troops enforce harsh containment measures. The brothers are angered by reports of temples and religious objects being desecrated during house searches.
• 22 June 1897: On Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, Damodar Hari shoots Walter Charles Rand, chair of Pune’s Special Plague Committee. Balkrishna Hari kills Rand’s military escort, Lt. Ayerst, in the same attack.
• 18 April 1898: Damodar Hari, arrested first, is hanged.
• 8-12 May 1899: Vasudeo Hari (8 May) and Balkrishna Hari (12 May) are also hanged, along with co-conspirator Mahadev Vinayak Ranade.

Must Know

• Damodar Hari Chapekar (1869-1898), Balkrishna Hari Chapekar (1873-1899), and Vasudeo Hari Chapekar (1880-1899) were three brothers from Chapa, near Pune.
• They are considered the first armed revolutionaries to assassinate a British official in India.
• On 22 June 1897, they shot dead Walter Charles Rand, chair of Pune’s Special Plague Committee, and his military escort, Lt. Ayerst.
• Their motive was the brutal, invasive measures British troops used to contain a bubonic plague outbreak in Pune.
• Damodar Hari was hanged first, on 18 April 1898. Vasudeo Hari and Balkrishna Hari were hanged in May 1899.

Good to Know

• Rand’s Special Plague Committee deployed over 800 soldiers. They forcibly entered homes, sometimes at night, and stripped and examined residents in public.
• Rand died of his injuries on 3 July 1897. Lt. Ayerst was killed instantly, at the scene.
• The brothers signalled their attack with a coded phrase: “Gondya ala re,” meaning “Gondya has come.”
• Damodar’s arrest came from information given by informants known as the Dravid brothers. In response, the surviving Chapekars had the informants killed, with help from co-conspirators Mahadev Vinayak Ranade and Khando Vishnu Sathe.
• All those convicted were hanged in May 1899, except the juvenile Sathe. He received 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment instead.

Test Yourself

Please wait…

1. The Chapekar brothers are considered India’s first armed revolutionaries to do what?

Publish an underground newspaper

Assassinate a British official

Organise a countrywide strike

Form a political party

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Great to Know

• The assassination forced a real reassessment of British public-health policy in colonial India. Even Bal Gangadhar Tilak, an early critic of the harsh containment measures, came to support vaccination efforts by 1906.
• Both Tilak and reformer Gopal Krishna Gokhale had publicly condemned the plague-response abuses that provoked the brothers. Neither endorsed the violence itself.
• Damodar Hari’s own courtroom statement explained the killings as revenge for the “pollution of sacred places.” Authorities treated that statement as his confession.
• Their story has been dramatised repeatedly on screen, including the films 22 June 1897 (1979) and Chapekar Brothers (2016).
• All three brothers were executed within just over a year of each other. That is a stark, coordinated cost paid by a single family for one act.