Reginald Dyer
British officer who ordered troops to fire on the crowd at Jallianwala Bagh in April 1919 without warning, killing hundreds.
Reginald Dyer was born in 1864 at Murree in the Punjab, the son of a brewer, and became a brigadier-general in the Indian Army.
On 13 April 1919, the day of Vaisakhi, after riots in Amritsar, he marched troops into the Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden where thousands had gathered, Sikhs and others, many of them pilgrims and villagers unaware of his ban on meetings. Without warning, he ordered his fifty riflemen to fire into the crowd, and they fired for some ten minutes, 1,650 rounds, until the ammunition ran low. By official count 379 people died; Indian estimates were over a thousand.
He also ordered Indians to crawl on their bellies through the street where a British missionary had been attacked. Censured and forced to resign, he was praised by many in Britain, where a fund raised a fortune for him. He died in 1927.
Connected
Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab who endorsed the Amritsar shooting and imposed martial law. Shot dead in London by Udham Singh in 1940.
Shot Michael O'Dwyer, governor of Punjab at the time of Jallianwala Bagh, in London in 1940 and was hanged at Pentonville.