Though she was making swift progress in the wireless operator training, Noor felt that she needed to contribute to the war efforts in an active manner, which led her to seek a transfer elsewhere within the British forces.In 1942, Noor was recruited by the SOE (Special Operations Executive – an underground espionage and sabotage task-force setup by Britain’s then Prime Minister Winston Churchill) At that time, SOE’s F (France) section was facing a severe shortage of agents with the exact skill-set combination of fluent French and accurate wireless operator abilities.
He moved his family first to London and then to Paris, where Khan was educated and later worked writing childrens' stories. She pursued a course in music at École Normale de Musique de Paris and child psychology at the Sorbonne. Khan was a princess, a direct descendant of the Indian princely state ruler, Tipu Sultan. Her mission would be very perilous, since she would be the crucial connection between London and the SOE-F section networks in occupied-France. Betrayal by a double agent led to her captivity by the Gestapo (German secret police). Her strong spiritual beliefs led her superiors to believe that she would not be able to make quick ruthless decisions, as often required in espionage and sabotage work.After receiving this negative feedback, Khan diligently worked to improve her physical fitness, her Morse code skills and also overcame her fear of weapons. Despite repeated torture, she refused to reveal any information. Her trainers also noted that she often left codebooks out in the open and her ‘fist’ (style of typing keys for Morse code) was quite heavy. In 2014, the British Royal Mail issued a commemorative stamp in honour of Noor Inayat Khan. A firm believer in the principle of non-violence taught under Sufism (a mystical form of Islam), Khan overcame her physical shortcomings and fear of weapons to train as a spy and fight fascism. The role of Noor was played by Puja Uppal. what is noor inayat khan famous for? She was a British secret agent during World War II, working as a radio operator in occupied Paris. She posed as a children’s nurse, and was given the code name ‘Madeleine’.But the SOE’s mission in Paris was compromised right from the beginning and within a week of Noor’s arrival, the Gestapo arrested almost all the SOE operators in Paris. Posthumously, both Britain and France accorded several honours and awards to her.Noor-un-Nissa Inayat Khan was born on 1 January 1914 in Moscow, where her father, Inayat Khan, a musician and teacher of Sufism, was performing with his group, the Royal Musicians of Hindustan. Khan was Britain’s first Muslim war heroine in Europe and was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949. Noor Inayat Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star for her work. Noor somehow managed to outwit and escape the Gestapo and thereafter, she was the only SOE undercover radio operator left in Paris. By single-handedly performing the tasks of six radio operators, Khan enabled the safe delivery of crucial packages and aided in the escape of many Allied forces’ members.The exact cause of Khan’s capture is unclear, but from post-war interrogations of Gestapo officers, it is believed that a suspected double agent, Henri Déricourt, or Renée Garry, the sister of an SOE-F network leader betrayed Khan. In October, Khan was betrayed by a Frenchwoman and arrested by the Gestapo. Her work over the next few months was extraordinarily brave.In a bid to evade the Gestapo, Khan was always on the move, never staying in one place for a long time.
She would have to send and receive messages about planned sabotage operations and enemy movements, without being discovered by the moving detection vans of the Gestapo.Khan was flown to occupied-France in June 1943, and became the first female radio operator to achieve this distinction. The following deviations from facts have been noted: In fact, working as the only radio operator in occupied Paris. She was a direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century Muslim ruler of Mysore. She died at age 30 as a POW in Dachau with her last word being 'Liberté'. She was also the first female radio operator to work undercover in France, relaying messages to the Allied forces, co-ordinating crucial missions and saving countless lives.