Babu Genu

A Mill worker and a resident of the Phoenix Mills Chawl was participant in the 1930, Civil Disobedience Movement during which he had laid blockade at shops selling foreign cloth. On December 12, 1930 while protesting against a consignment of foreign cloth being shifted from a store house, he was mowed down by a truck loaded with bales of foreign cloth material on Kalbadevi Road in South Mumbai. He was taken to the nearby GT hospital for treatment but soon succumbed to his injuries. Crowds of people assembled in at the congested place where he was killed paying tribute to his memory and the rampaging mob also burnt bonfires of clothes at various thoroughfares in the city. Major newspapers such as The Times of India, Navakal, Bombay Chronicle and Bombay Samachar reported extensively on Babu Genu over the next two days. At the Parel's Kamgar Maidan in Mumbai a statue of the martyr was installed in his memory.