British-era cannon found during widening of bridge at Haringhata

Kolkata: Workers while undertaking work for widening of a bridge over a canal at Haringhata in Nadia district have stumbled upon a cannon which probably belonged to the British era.

The bridge over the canal was extremely narrow and was in a deplorable state and hence the state Public Works Department (PWD) has recently undertaken repair and widening of the bridge to facilitate the movement of vehicles on it. While carrying out the excavation work there on Wednesday night, the workers engaged by the state PWD stumbled upon the cannon all of a sudden.

According to the local cops, the canal system which was called Jamuna linked River Ganges with Padma in Bangladesh along the Bongain border. "I have heard from elderly people in the area that the canal was used during the Battle of Plassey for moving of arms and ammunition. The cannon might have dropped somehow, sunk in the canal here and might have got embedded in the ground," said Arunava Saha, a local resident.

Interestingly, the condition of the cannon is such that the brass polish in major portions of it is still intact.

"We are verifying the details of the discovery which is presently in custody of the Haringhata police station. The Archaeological Survey of India has been contacted for the purpose," said Pawan Kadyan, District Magistrate, Nadia.

It may be mentioned that Siraj-Ud-Daulah's army with 50,000 soldiers, 40 cannons and 10 war elephants was vanquished by 3,000 soldiers of Colonel Robert Clive. Siraj had a numerically superior force but the British formed a conspiracy with the former's demoted army chief Mir Jafar and several others. Mir Jafar and his associates assembled their troops near the battlefield but made no move to actually join the battle and the war ended in 11 hours flat.