Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/166

become Lieutenant-Governor. He had called at my house at Barrackpore, a compliment rarely paid in those days to Indian gentlemen by European officers; and we corresponded upon public questions. I gave him the first information about the occurrence, he had not heard of it before; for the doctor was then still alive. I explained to him the facts of the case. He fully shared my indig- nation, and said that he would do his best to bring the culprits to justice. I suggested that Babu Ashutosh Biswas, Public Prosecutor, one of the ablest criminal lawyers of his time, should at once be instructed to take up the case. Mr. Allen agreed. Instructions were issued and Babu Ashutosh came up to Barrackpore to look after the case.

I did not stop there. I sent a message to the newspaper India in London by wire, giving the facts of the case, with the result that a question was asked in Parliament about the matter. I called upon Sir John Woodburn, the Lieutenant-Governor, and spoke to him about the case. He expressed the utmost abhorrence of the crime, and told me that His Excellency the Viceroy (Lord Elgin) was taking an interest in the matter. I gathered from the conversation that a message had come from the Secretary of State, as the result of the interpellation in Parliament.

The case was committed to the High Court Sessions. Mr. Justice Jenkins, who was then a Puisne Judge, presided over the ordinary criminal sessions. But the Chief Justice himself, Sir Francis Maclean, sat to try the case with a special jury, the majority of whom were Europeans. The charges against the accused were those of murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and griev- ous hurt. The jury brought in a unanimous verdict of guilty of grievous hurt, acquitting the prisoners on the more serious charges. What the Chief Justice thought of the verdict might be inferred from the fact that he inflicted upon the prisoners the highest punishment under the law.

Mr. W. S. Caine, Member of Parliament, commenting upon this case, said that all three should have been strung up on a tree. If indeed it was not an act of deliberate murder, it was certainly a case of the infliction of such grievous bodily injuries as were likely to cause death. It is difficult to see how it could be otherwise than a case of culpable homicide. I have not yet met a high European official who has not expressed his unqualified condemnation of these cowardly assaults, which unfortunately are now and then committed by Europeans upon Indians.