Black Hole of Calcutta:-

The "Black Hole of Calcutta" was a tiny prison cell in Fort William, in the Indian city of Calcutta.According to John Zephaniah Holwell of the British East India Company, on June 20, 1756, the Nawab of Bengal imprisoned 146 British captives inside the airless room overnight. When the chamber was opened the next morning, only 23 men (including Holwell) were still alive.

The dimensions of the room is (24 feet x 18 feet), it would not have been possible to cram more than about 65 prisoners into the space.

According to a calculation by Professor Brijen Gupta in the 1950s, the total of prisoners shut in the black hole was probably sixty-four, of whom twenty-one came out alive. He also produced evidence that Siraj-ud-daula did not order the prisoners to be shut in the black hole and knew nothing about it until afterwards.

Vengeance was swift. Robert Clive marched on Calcutta and set siege to Fort William, which was also bombarded by an accompanying fleet of warships under Admiral Charles Watson. The fort fell to the British in January 1757 and in February with an army of a mere 3,000 men, Clive routed Siraj’s army of perhaps 50,000 with their cannon and war-elephants at Plassey.Siraj fled to Murshidabad, where he was killed by his own people and his body thrown into the river.

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