Producer: Films Division
Director: Satarupa Sanyal
Narrator: Masood Ul Huq

It is a pity that no one thought of making a documentary film on Jatin Das for more than 80 years after his martyrdom. As a consequence, today’s generation links the name of this great man only to a park in Kolkata and the underground Metro in front of it. Yet, Jatin Das is one of the greater martyrs of Indian history. His contribution to the revolt against the British rule remains unparalleled in history. Yet, very little information about him is available in the archives and not a single documentary has been made on his life.

Immortal Martyr Jatin Das is a commendable and pioneering effort by Satarupa Sanyal. This partly- fictionalised documentary traces the birth, growth, education and evolution of Jatin Das who died at the tender age of 25 in Lahore Jail. On August 9, 1925, a group of 10 revolutionaries robbed the railway treasury from a train in Kakori in Uttar Pradesh. Jatin was among the revolutionaries arrested and was sent to Midnapore Jail from where he was later transferred to Mymensingh jail where, along with Pannalal Mukherjee, he went on a hunger strike for 20 days to protest the ill-treatment and torture of political prisoners. They were then transferred to the notorious Mianwali Jail in West Pakistan as punishment for the fast they undertook in Mymensingh.

After being released in October 28, he was re-arrested following the bomb blast in the Central Legislative Assembly on April 8, 1929 after Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutta were caught red-handed and placed in Lahore Jail. In their demand to gain status as political prisoners, Jatin Das and 10 other revolutionaries joined the fast initiated by Singh and Dutta. But even when others called off the fast on September 2, Das stuck on till reduced to a skeleton and died of starvation 63 days later, on September 13, 2009, on the lap of his younger brother Kiron at the tender age of 25.

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