Year: 1875

Curious Trials In India.


WHEN Mr.. Reade, Commissioner of
Benares, was Collector at Gorakpur, he
one day visited the Jail and happened to
ask prisoner what he was there for.
The man smiled and said:


Murder" .,


Reade replied that murder was no iok-
ing matter, on which the man said:


eyes, but am not guilty, and, what
is more, the man is alive now."


There was something in the mans man.
ner which made Mr.. Reade inquire par
ticularly into the case, and the story
told him was that the party supposed to
be murdered, who was a barkandaz of
police, had had some quarrel with the
prisoners brother, upon which the pris-
oner and his three brothers laid plot to
waylay him one night and give him
good drubbing. They did so according
ly, 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 suspicion
being strong against the four brothers, 1t
was agreed among themselves that, as
harvest time was near, the prisoner
should take the crime entirely on his own
shoulders, and 50 get the others iber-
ated. He did so, admitted 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
pension was given to the family of the
murdered policeman. This story was
told with such vrai-similitude Reade
made careful inquiry into the whole,
and found every word of it true, and
after much trouble discovered the police
man hundreds of miles off, acting as a
peon at the court of Nagpore, glad to
think that his family, in the meantime,
had been well provided for at Gorakpur
by pension from Government for his
supposed death. The rogue had no
doubt kept purposely out of the way, in
order to secure this provision for his
family.


My own experience of famous Case
story; for there | saw three prisoners
standing at the bar who had given a 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 were identi-
| fed by his friends and relations. Yet
the doctor, my intelligent friend, DR..
Kirt-who accompanied Sir W. Harris to
Abyssinla-on examining the bones, as
certained that they belonged to three or
| four different corpses; 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 examine his
own bones with infinite curiosity.


The story which he told, and which &C
counted for his remarkable disappear
ance from his village on the night of the
supposed murder, was not the least re-
markable part of the tale, and is a good
| illustration of manners in the East"
He had been seen last somewhere near
the house of the prisoners, and he stated
that as he was going homeward he met
four or five Arab soldiers, who pressed
him in their train to carry bundle, and
who made him accompany them for a six
weeks march into the interior some
what beyond Poona. When they dis
missed him he was taken ill of fever and
laid some months sick at village in the
Deccan. When at last, after four
months absence, he got back to his own
village, he found that three of his neigh
bors stood 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 off, 1t would seem most prob
able that the confessions in question had
been extorted by the violence Of the
subordinate native police.-Sir Erskine
Perry.


JONES gave lawyer bill to be col
lected, to the amount of $50. Calling for