The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1875-07-03
Curious Trials In India.


When Mr.. Reade, com missioner o
B-nares, was collector at Gorakpur, h,
one day visited the Jail, and happened
"a ask prisoner what he was there for
The mat; smiled, and said:
| murder"
Reade replied that murder was M
Joking matter, on which the man said
Yes, but l am lot guilty and what
is more, the man is alive now"
There was something in the man +
manner which made Mr.. Reade inquire
particularly into the case, and the story
| told him was, that the party supposed
to be murdered, who was a barkandaz
of police, and had some quarrel with
the prisoners brother, upon which the
prisoner and his three brothers laid a
| plot to waylay him and give him good
| drubbing. They did SO accordingly,
and the policeman either fell, or was
thrown by them, into a river, BY the
| side Of which they had been waylaying
him. The man being missing. and sus
picion being strong against the four
brothers, it was agreed among them
selves that, as harvest time was near,
the prisoner should take the crime en-
tirely on his own shoulders, and so get
the others liberated. He did SO, admit
found guilty but, probably on the
score of the corpse not being found,
was sentenced only to imprisonment for
life, and pension given to the family
OF the murdered policeman. This story
was told with such veri- similitude that
Reade made a careful seHrcf-ssSo vf1e
whole, and found every word of it true,
and after much trouble discovered the
policeman hundreds of miles off, acting
as peon at the court of Nagpore, glad
to think that his family, in the mean
time, had been we'll provided for at
Gorakpur, by a pension from the gov
eminent for his supposed death. The
rogue had no doubt kept purposely out
of the way, in order to secute this pro-
vision for his family.
My own experience of a famous case
at Tanna tallies we'll with the above
story; for there I saw three prisoners
standing at the bar who had given a civ
cumstantial confession of murder, and
pointed out the very spot where the
bones of the murdered man would be
found. These were produced in court,
and part of the clothes and the caste
thre d of the murd red man we're iden-
tifie by his friends and relations. Yet
the doctor, my intelligent friend, DR..
Kirt-who accompanied Sir W. Harris to
Approximately examining the bones, as
certained that they belonged to three or
four different corpses I; and as this Incl
dent gave sort of hitch to the proceed
ings, and prolonged the trial, the result
was, that before it was over the MUIR
dered man himself walked into the
court, and, it is said, was seen to exam
inc his own bones with infinite curiosity.
The story which he told, and which
accounted for his remarkable disappear
ance, from his village on the night of
the supposed murder, was not the most |
part of the tale, and is a |
good illustration of "Manners in the |
East" He had been seen last some |
where near the house of the prisoners, |
and he stated that as he was going home |
ward he met four or five Arab soldiers,
who pressed him in their train to carry |
3 bundle, and who made him accompany |
them for six weeks march into the in |
terror, somewhere beyond Poona. When |
they dismissed him he was taken ill of |
fever, and laid some months sick at |
village in the Ocean. When at last, af-
ter four months absence, he got back to
his own village. he found that three of |
his EeiYhbors stood a near chance of |
being hung, on their own confession,
'or numbering him. So, like an honest
fellow, he made his way to tho criminal
,ourt, which, luckily for the prisoners.
vas not above ten miles off 1t would
'eem most probable that the confessions
n question had been extorted by the
of the subordinate native police.