Early Life
Pritilata was born in a middle-class Vaidya-Brahmin family on 5 May 1911 in Dhalghat village in Patiya upazila (now in Bangladesh. Her father Jagabandhu Waddedar was a clerk in the Chittagong Municipality. Her mother Pratibhamayi Devi was a housewife. Pritilata was nicknamed Rani. Waddedar was a title conferred to an ancestor of the family who originally had the surname Dasgupta.
Jagabandhu tried to arrange best possible education for their children.He got Pritilata admitted in Dr Khastagir Government Girls' School. Pritilata was a meritorious student.
In Calcutta
To pursue higher education, Pritilata went to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and got admitted to the Bethune College. Two years later, she graduated in Philosophy from the college with a distinction. However, her degree was withheld by British authorities at Calcutta University. In 2012, she (and Bina Das) were conferred their certificates of merit posthumously.[3]
Career
After completing her education in Calcutta, Pritilata returned to Chittagong. In Chittagong, she took up the job of a school teacher at a local English medium secondary school called Nandankanan Aparnacharan School. She was appointed as the first Headmistress of the school.
Revolutionary activities
Pritilata decided to join the Indian independence movement. Surya Sen had heard about her and wanted her to join their revolutionary group. On 13 June 1932, Pritilata met Surya Sen and Nirmal Sen in their Dhalghat camp. A contemporary revolutionary, Binod Bihari Chowdhury, objected that they did not allow women to join their group. However, Pritalata was allowed to join the group because the revolutionaries reasoned that women transporting weapons would not attract as much suspicion as men.
In 1932, Surya Sen planned to attack the Pahartali European Club which had a signboard that read "Dogs and Indians not allowed". Surya Sen decided to appoint a woman leader for this mission. Kalpana Datta was arrested seven days before the event. Because of this, Pritilata was assigned the leadership of the attack. Pritilata went to Kotowali Sea Side for arms training and made the plan of their attack there.
They decided to attack the club on 23 September 1932. The members of the group were given potassium cyanide and were told to swallow it if they were caught.
On the day of the attack, Pritilata dressed herself as a Punjabi male. Her associates Kalishankar Dey, Bireshwar Roy, Prafulla Das, Shanti Chakraborty wore dhoti and shirt. Mahendra Chowdhury, Sushil Dey and Panna Sen wore lungi and shirt.
They reached the club at around 10:45 PM and launched their attack. There were around 40 people inside the club then. The revolutionaries divided themselves into three separate groups for the attack. In the club, a few police officers who had revolvers started shooting. Pritilata incurred a single bullet wound. According to the police report, in this attack, one woman with a surname of Sullivan died and four men and seven women were injured.
An injured Pritilata was trapped by the British police. She swallowed cyanide to avoid getting arrested.The next day, the police found her body and identified her. On searching her dead body, the police found a few leaflets, photograph of Ramkrishna Biswas, bullets, whistle and the draft of their plan of attack.
During the post-mortem it was found that the bullet injury was not very serious and that cyanide poisoning was the cause of her death. The chief secretary of Bengal sent a report to British authorities in London. In the report it was written– “Pritilata had been closely associated with, if not actually the mistress of, the terrorist Biswas who was hanged for the murder of Inspector Tarini Mukherjee, and some reports indicate that she was the wife of Nirmal Sen who was killed while attempting to evade arrest of Dhalghat, where Captain Cameron fell.”
