Noor Inayat Khan

Noor Inayat Khan

• Noor Inayat Khan, World War II Heroine, was born in Moscow in January 1914 to an Indian father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and an American mother, Ora Ray Baker. She was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the remarkable 19th century ruler of Mysore kingdom.
• She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was later recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret organization started by Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
• She was the first woman radio operator to be flown undercover to Paris and worked from there for three months under the code name Madeleine. However she was betrayed, arrested and finally executed in Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. Though she was tortured and interrogated, she revealed nothing, not even her real name. Her last word as they shot her was "Liberte"! She was only 30.
• She was posthumously awarded the highest honour, the George Cross, by Britain. France awarded her the Croix de Guerre.
• In 2006, President Pranab Mukherjee, then the defence minister of India, paid an official visit to Noor's family house outside Paris and described her bravery and sacrifice as "inspirational".