RANCHI: The Italian made Ford 514 has been a member of the Lalpur-based Chatterjee family for over a century now. In 1932, the then Dr Fanindra Nath Chatterjee, a physician, had purchased it for his personal use. Little did he know then that his car would become one of the best preserved artefacts in Ranchi linked to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
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A year before Bose hoodwinked the British and slipped out of house arrest from his Elgin Road residence in Kolkata, he was under the watchful eyes of the British. “In 1940, he was being monitored round the clock by the British. The broad gauge line between Muri and Ranchi railway stations was yet to be built. Netaji, under disguise, reached Chakradharpur by train on March 18 that year,” Arup Chatterjee, grandson of Fanindra Nath, said.
Together with Dr Yadugopal Mukherjee, a close aide of Bose who was living in Ranchi then, Dr Fanindra brought Bose to Ranchi by road in the Ford 514. Bose who was enroute to Ramgarh to address an anti-compromise meeting where he would formally announce plans to launch Forward Bloc, checked into one Fanindra Aikat’s home in Lalpur on March 18.
“Netaji stayed in Ranchi on March 18 and 19 and went around the town in this car. On March 20, he was driven to Ramgarh for the meeting. He sat in the back. My grandfather drove the car and Mukherjee occupied the co-driver’s seat. After the meeting, he was driven to Ranchi Road railway station (nearly 60 km from Ranchi), where he boarded the train to Calcutta,” Arup said.
The car became a prized possession for Fanindra. The family sent it to vintage car rallies until 1997. With time, however, maintenance became an uphill task as its spare parts went out of circulation. Foreseeing the problem, the family bought another car of the same model in 1968 and took its parts out so that the car could be maintained.
Arup’s father SN Chatterjee regularly switches on the engine to keep it in working condition. Once a fortnight, Arup takes the car out on the streets for a drive. “Come whatever may, we are not going to sell it,” he stated.
