He was born on 30 December 1898, he was the third of six siblings of Peary Lal Roy and Lolita Royal His father was a barrister and his maternal grandfather Doctor Surya Kumar Goodeve Chakraborty was one of the first Indian doctors to be trained in Western medicine.
He attended the Saint Paul"s School in London.
He is known as the Father of Indian Boxing. Roy came from the landlord family of Lakhutia in Barisal district. Roy came from a family of highly qualified and established persons.
Roy received his education in England.
Jim Driscoll himself took the responsibility of training Royal He passed in Bachelor of Arts from Cambridge University.
Roy was the first Cambridge Blue from Asia. Apart from boxing Roy was also proficient in shooting and horse riding.
He was the first amateur Indian jockey to have ridden a horse in a race.
In the army he rose to be a lieutenant. After the war he completed in Masters in Economics from Cambridge University in 1919 and returned to India. He joined the Bengal Railway as a traffic superintendent.
In the 1920s, the sport of boxing was popular mainly among the Anglo-Indians.
In order to organize boxing as a sport and make it popular among the Indians, Roy opened a boxing training centre in Ballygunge. In 1928, he took initiative to organize the first inter-Railway Boxing Championship at Kolkata.
In the same year he founded the Bengal Boxing Federation and became its secretary. Later he became its president
Among the notable students of Roy were Pramatha Chaudhuri, Phanindra Krishna Mitra, Nagen Chatterjee, Joaquim C. A. Minus, Abulal, Johnny Natal, R. Austin, Doctorate. Gasper, Kartik Dutta et cetera
He also defeated Philippine boxer Young Turley once.
In 2011 the Indian Railway immortalised Paresh Lal Roy by unveiling a marble bust of the boxer in an indoor stadium named after him. The P L Roy Indoor Stadium is located in Sealdah. The statue was unveiled by A K Gupta, additional general manager Eastern Railway and President Eastern Railway Sports Association.
