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Ram Chandra Pandurang Tope (1814 - 1859), also known as Tatya Tope (pronounced Toh-pey), was an Indian leader in the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
Born in village Yeola in Maharashtra, he was the only son of Pandurang Rao Tope and his wife Rukhmabai, an important noble at the court of the Maratha Peshwa Baji Rao II. His father shifted his family with the Peshwa to Bithur where his son became the most intimate friend of the Peshwa's adopted son, Nana Dhondu Pant (known as Nana Sahib) and Maharaja Madhav Singhji.
In 1851, when Lord Dalhousie deprived Nana Sahib of his father's pension, Tatya Tope also became a sworn enemy of the British. In May 1857, when the political storm was gaining momentum, he won over the Indian troops of the East India Company, stationed at Kanpur (Cawnpore), established Nana Sahib's authority and became the Commander-in-Chief of his forces.
He helped orchestrate the attack on Hugh Wheeler's entrenchment (many of whom were women and children) after promising them safe passage to Allahabad at the Sati Chowra on the Ganges River. Over two hundred women and children were massacared despite pleas from Nana Sahib and the Rebel sepoys to show mercy.
After losing Gwalior to the British, Tope launched a successful guerrilla campaign in the Sagar and Narmada regions and in Khandesh and Rajasthan. The British forces failed to subdue him for over a year. He was, however, betrayed into the hands of the British by his trusted friend Man Singh, Chief of Narwar, while asleep in his camp in the Paron forest. He was defeated and captured on 7 April 1859 by British General Richard John Meade's troops and taken to Shivpuri where he was tried by a military court.
Tope admitted the charges brought before him saying that he was answerable to his master Peshwa alone. He was executed at the gallows on April 18, 1859. There is a statue of Tatya Tope at the site of his execution near the present collectorate in Shivpuri town in Madhya Pradesh.
Tope is considered a hero in India.
Writes Colonel G.B. Malleson , eloquently in The Indian Mutiny of 1857- "Tántiá Topí was a marvellous guerilla warrior. In pursuit of him, Brigadier Parke had marched, consecutively, 240 miles in nine days; Brigadier Somerset, 230 in nine days, and, again, seventy miles in forty-eight hours; Colonel Holmes, through a sandy desert, fifty-four miles in little over twenty-four hours; Brigadier Honner, 145 miles in four days. Yet he slipped through them all--through enemies watching every issue of the jungles in which he lay concealed, only to fall at last through the treachery of a trusted friend. His capture, and the surrender of Mán Singh, finished the war in Central India. Thenceforth his name only survived"
On 19 June 2007 the Times of India reported that in response to a request from the NGO Bismillah: the Beginning Foundation, 1 lakh Rupees of financial aid was to be provided to his descendants who live in Kanpur.