Year: 1875

| by Sir Erskine Perry


When Mr.. Reade, commissioner of


Benares, was collector at Gorakpur, he


one day visited the Jail, and happened
\ to ask a prisoner what he was there for.


The man smiled, and said:


''Murder."


Reade replied that murder was no
| joking matter. on which the man said !:


" Yes, but I am not guilty; and what


is more, the man is alive now"


There was something in the mans


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 barkandsz
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 wsylaying


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
ted the murder, and, of course, was
found guilty but, probably on the
score of the corpse not being found,
was sentenced only to imprisonment for
life, and a pension given to the family
of the murdered policeman. This story
was told with such veri-similitude that
Reade made a careful search into the
whole. and found every word of it true,
and after much trouble discovered the
policeman hundreds of miles of, acting
as a peOn at the court of Nagpore, glad
to think that his family, in the mean
time, had been well 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 secure this pro-
vision for his family.


My own experience of a famous case
at Tanna talIes well with the above
story for there I saw three prisoners
standing at the bar who had given cir
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
thread of the murdered man we're iden-
titled by his friends and relations. Yet
the doctor, my intelligent friend, DR..
Kirt-who accompanied Sir W. Harris to
Abyssinia-on examining the bones, as
certained that they belonged to three or
four different corpses and as this Incl
dent gave a sort of hitch to the proceed
ings, and prolonged the trial, the result
was, that before it was over the MUIR
dered man bimself 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
remarkable 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
a bundle, and who made him accompany
them for a six weeks march into the in
terror, somewhere beyond Poona. When
they dismissed him he was taken i'll 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 neighbors stood a near chance of
being hung, on their own confession,
for numbering him. So, like an honest
fellow, he made his way to the criminal
court, which, luckily for the prisoners,
was not above ten miles of. 1t would
seem most probable that the confessions
in question had been extorted by the
violence of the subordinate native police.