Revolutionary Kolyo Sarafcheto

Nikola Sarafov, known as Kolyo Sarafcheto, was a Bulgarian revolutionary and courier of the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation (IMARO). He was born in 1865 in the village of Sasa in the Kochani district, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

In the spring of 1903, five detachments led by voivodes Hristo Chernopeev, Petar Samardzhiev, Nikola Zhekov and Panayot Baychev, along with a technical detachment responsible for laying mines, were formed near Radomir. Hristo Chernopeev was the overall commander of all the detachments, including the so-called technical detachment. Nikola Sarafov, known as Kolyo Sarafcheto, was their courier and participated in the battles in the Kochani district during the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising. He became voivode of the first organised detachment in the Kochani district.

After the uprising ended, Sarafcheto continued working as a courier, transporting weapons, supplies and other items into the country. At IMARO's Skopje Congress in 1905, a decision was taken to investigate Nikola Sarafov for financial abuses: if offences were established, he was to be punished with death; otherwise, he was to be isolated from the organisation.

After the First World War, in 1921, Nikola Sarafov was beaten to death by the Serbian administration in the Vardar Banovina. He died in hospital in Shtip with a broken spine.