It’s Time To Remember Odisha’s Raghu Nayak Who ‘Fought’ Gandhi’s Assassin

Bhubaneswar: It was on this day in 1948 that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse in the Birla House compound in Delhi. And it was Gandhi’s gardener Raghu Nayak, a native of Jagulaipada village in Odisha’s Kandrapda, who had grabbed the tall killer and struck a blow to the latter’s head with the khurpi he used to dig the soil.

Some reports suggest that the 37-year-old pinned him down with his bare hands.

Nayak was one of the prosecution witnesses who helped trial judge Atma Charan sentence Godse to death. He, however, was hailed as a hero much later and the then President Rajendra Prasad gave him a cash reward of Rs 500 with a letter lauding him for “fighting Godse” on February 2, 1955.

He kept on serving at the Birla House as a gardener till he retired in 1968. Nayak died in 1983 never getting the due recognition.

Almost 33 years after his death, the Odisha government in 2016 felicitated his 85-year-old widow, Mandodari Nayak, and handed over a cheque of Rs 5 lakh.

In 2005, a memorial pillar in Nayak’s memory was erected his village, where he is a hero, with assistance from German automobile maker Daimler-Chrysler.