The Komagata Maru, turned back from Vancouver, reached Budge Budge on the Hooghly on 29 September 1914 with 321 passengers still aboard, most of them Sikhs from Punjab. It had sailed with 376 and had been forced out of Vancouver with 352.
The government intended to put them on a special train to Punjab and disperse them under the Ingress into India Ordinance. The passengers wanted to go to Calcutta first to deposit the Guru Granth Sahib Ji at a gurdwara. They set off on foot.
There was a confrontation and firing. Nineteen passengers were killed. Twenty-nine escaped, the rest were arrested or sent to Punjab under restriction. Baba Gurdit Singh got away and remained a fugitive until 1921, when he surrendered at Gandhi's urging and served five years.
The episode connected the Komagata Maru directly to the Ghadar movement. Many of the survivors joined it.
A memorial stands at Budge Budge. The Vancouver end of the story is commemorated in Canada. The Punjab end, which villages the passengers came from and what happened to their families, has never been assembled.
The ship was brought up the Hooghly under escort and the passengers were to be put on a train to Punjab under police custody rather than allowed into Calcutta.
They refused, marched toward the city, and were fired on. Nineteen were killed and the rest were arrested or interned in their villages under wartime regulations.
The site near Calcutta has a memorial. The men who died there had left Punjab expecting Canada and were shot in Bengal.