Anushilan Samiti
Anushilan Samiti (Ōnūshīlōn sōmītī, "lit": body-building society) was a Bengali Indian organisation that existed in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and propounded revolutionary violence as the means for ending British rule in India. The organisation arose from a conglomeration of local youth groups and gyms ("Akhara") in Bengal in 1902. It had two prominent, if somewhat independent, arms in East and West Bengal identified as Dhaka Anushilan Samiti centred in Dhaka (modern day Bangladesh), and the Jugantar group (centred at Calcutta) respectively.
Emperor vs Aurobindo Ghosh and others
Significantly, as the hearings proceeded through 1908 into 1909, the government of Bengal came to fear that "Aushilan samiti" would mount a rescue mission to breakout the undertrials. A noted rise in militant actions and assassinations linked to "Anushilan samiti" in wider Bengal began to be reported, reaching the premises of the Alipore court as the hearings drew to a close. In November 1908, two assassinations were attempted in Calcutta two days apart, one targeting Chief of Police Andrew Fraser and the second where Nandalal Bannerjee- the police officer who had arrested Prafulla Chaki- was gunned down, both in public. That same month, a police informant was killed and mutilated in Dacca. A shaken Bengal government arrested and deported a number of "Anushilan" leaders, including Raja Subodh Mallik, Aurobindo's uncle Krishna Kumar Mitra, and "Bande mataram" editor Shyamsunder Chakravarty to Rangoon. In response, in March 1909, "Anushilan" assassinated public prosecutor Ashutosh Biswas when he was gunned down by Charu Bose in the very steps of the Alipore High court where the hearings were beginning to draw to a close. The final arguments for prosecution and defense began amidst tight security at the end of March, 1909. Das, closing his argument for defense, famously stated: