# Phadke's rising and the Chapekar brothers
**फड़के का विद्रोह और चापेकर बंधु**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/phadke-chapekar/
- Chapter: [Crown and the freedom struggle](https://indianepics.online/chapter/raj.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 1879 CE – 1899 CE
- Where: Ganeshkhind Road, Pune (18.54, 73.836)
- Tags: political, colonial

## Summary

Vasudev Balwant Phadke's armed band raids the country around Pune in 1879; in 1897 the Chapekar brothers shoot plague commissioner Rand.

1879 में वासुदेव बलवंत फड़के के सशस्त्र दल ने पुणे के आसपास छापे मारे; 1897 में चापेकर बंधुओं ने प्लेग कमिश्नर रैंड को गोली मारी।

## Account

Phadke, a clerk in the military accounts office at Poona, raised a band mostly of Ramoshis, later joined by Kolis and Dhangars, after the famine of 1876 to 1878. From early 1879 they raided moneylenders and rich households, beginning at Dhamari in Shirur taluka, to pay for a rising and to feed famine-hit villages. He was captured on 20 July 1879 at Devar Navadgi in Kaladgi district, tried at Poona, and transported for life to Aden, where he died on 17 February 1883. British records called him a dacoit; Marathi memory calls him the father of armed revolt.

Bubonic plague spread through Poona in 1897. The special plague committee under W. C. Rand sent soldiers into homes to search for the sick, remove them to camps and burn infected property. On the night of 22 June 1897, after the Diamond Jubilee celebrations at Government House, Ganeshkhind, Damodar and Balkrishna Chapekar shot Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst on the road back into town. Ayerst died on the spot and Rand on 3 July.

Tilak, whose Kesari had attacked the plague measures, was convicted of sedition later that year, the first of his three trials. Damodar, Balkrishna and their brother Vasudeo Chapekar were hanged in 1898 and 1899.

## Sources

- PIB, Vasudev Balwant Phadke (2016) — https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=148384
- Sedition Committee 1918, Report (Rowlatt report), chapter on Bombay — https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.285698

## Image

VasudevBalwantPhadkebust. No machine-readable author provided. Nichalp assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AVasudevBalwantPhadkebust.jpg

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