On the evening of August 9, 1925, the Number 8 Down train -- from Shahjahanpur to Lucknow -- was held-up, relieved of about Rs. 8,000, headed for the government treasury, from railway guard's carriage near Kakori.
The robbery was planned by ten revolutionaries at a meeting held in Agra. The ten were: Ramaprasad Bismil, Rajendra Lahiri, Thakur Roshan Singh, Sachindra Bakshi, Chandrasekhar Azad, Keshab Chakravarthy, Banwari Lal, Mukundi Lal, Manmathnath Gupta and Ashfaqulla Khan.