Background
Birendra Sutradhar was born to a Bengali Hindu family in the village of Baharampur under Nabiganj police station in the Habiganj sub-division in the undivided Sylhet district in September 1937.
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Birendra Sutradhar
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On 19 May 1961, while participating in a satyagraha demanding the official status for Bengali language in Barak Valley, he was shot by the paramilitary forces, dying in hospital twenty hours later, on 20 May 1961. In British India, the undivided Sylhet district and the undivided Cachar district constituted the Bengali-speaking majority Surma Valley Division of Assam. At the age of two Birendra lost is mother.
She had him admitted to school, but he had to discontinue his studies after the first standard.
They arrived in Silchar as refugees. Early in his career, Birendra had to struggle to earn a livelihood.
He chose carpentry, the traditional trade of his caste, becoming a skilled carpenter. In order to support his family, Birendra went to Aizawl in Mizo District for a better livelihood, where he began working under a contractor.
He terminated his contract prematurely and returned to Silchar on 17 May 1961.
In the street, he met Chandicharan Sutradhar, who took him to his workshop. At the workshop, Birendra came to know about the Bengali language movement and the problems of the Bengali speaking people from the student leaders of the movement. Birendra was instantly drawn into the movement.
On 19 May he took part in the satyagraha at the Tarapur railway station in Silchar.
At around 2-35 pm, the paramilitary personnel posted at the site began to fire at the satyagrahis, killing six persons on the spot and wounding many others The dead and the injured were carried to the Red Cross Hospital and the Silchar Civil Hospital for treatment.
On 21 May 1961, the bodies of Birendra Sutradhar and Satyendra Deb were recovered from a water body adjacent to the Tarapur railway station. He was survived by his eighteen-year-old widow and one-year-old daughter.
