Khudiram Bose artefacts lie neglected in Bihar, officials say

The wooden witness box from the 1908 trial of freedom fighter Khudiram Bose is decaying in a storeroom of the Muzaffarpur district mining department, sources told The Federal. The 18-year-old revolutionary was hanged by the British for a bombing that killed two British women. Officials say the box, kept with discarded furniture, has cracks and breaks and may not survive without urgent preservation.

Advocate SK Jha said the box should be declared national heritage and placed in a museum, alleging that Bose's case diary, hundreds of pages long, is also missing. The bombing spot in Company Bagh now houses a meat market, and a professor at Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bihar University said younger generations know little of Bose. District magistrate Kumar Gaurav told The Federal he had instructed officials to report on the matter and that steps would be taken to preserve the witness box.