A monstrous case is recorded by Mr. Arthur Crawford, whose “Reminiscences” have been several times quoted in these pages, in which a son was on such bad terms with his father that he elaborated a great plot to involve him in disgrace and suffering, if not to convict him of his own (the son’s) murder. The father was an aged and most respectable Brahmin in the South Konkan, Madhowrao by name, described as a kindly, courtly native gentleman, with intellectual, well-cut features, and spare and active in body. He had this one son, Vinayek, a constant trouble to him, chiefly on account of his wandering habits. He often absented himself for months together, and roamed the country as a gosai, or religious mendicant. After an unusually protracted absence, the father offered the police a reward if they would trace and find his son. The matter was taken up by a local constable, and he had no sooner commenced his investigations than he received an anonymous letter through the post charging the father with having made away with his son. The story was told most circumstantially: how Madhowrao, assisted by his widowed sister, who acted as his housekeeper, had strangled Vinayek in the dead of night, and had then employed two servants to throw the body to the alligators, at the foot of a torrent hard by the village. These servants came forward and described how they had seen the corpse with protruding eyes and tongue, the cord still round its neck, then how they had stripped it, and, tying it to a heavy stone, had thrown it into the water. The constable searched the house, and found hidden away a bundle of clothes with a pair of sandals. Moreover, he fished up a great heap of bones from the alligators’ pool. The whole party were arrested, and the servants, the chief witnesses, were examined. They stuck to their story, declared that they had acted solely to oblige their master, who, they saw, was in great distress, and said that was all they knew.
But Madhowrao himself stoutly denied his guilt, repeating always that his son was alive, but was only keeping out of the way until his father was hanged. Closer inquiry was in the father’s favour, for it was clearly proved that the bones found in the water were those of a bullock, and also that there was no sort of attempt to conceal Vinayek’s clothes. Nevertheless, the High Court, to which the matter had been referred, pressed for the committal of the prisoners.
Meanwhile, the head constable, a very keen-witted and indefatigable officer, had gone away on a journey. Pleading ill-health, he had sought, and obtained, three months’ sick leave, which he had spent to very good purpose in searching for the missing Vinayek. He ran him down at length at a great distance, somewhere in the territory of the Nizam, and brought him back in person, to be confronted with his father, who was still lying under the charge of compassing his death. A very dramatic scene followed; Vinayek was brought into court almost noiselessly behind Madhowrao, who was desired to turn round; at sight of his son he fell down flat on his face insensible, while his sister went off into hysterics. Now Vinayek made full confession of the plot, in which he had been assisted by a young cousin. He was to disappear, as he did, and after an interval the other was to denounce the murderers; the two servants were suborned by the promise of a good reward when Vinayek came into his estate, and they very properly shared the punishment which was inflicted on the chief conspirators.
In these cases it was vindictiveness and animosity that led to the plot, which was only unmasked by the astuteness and perseverance of the police. But greed also is a potent incentive to false accusation of crime, and thus it was with Khan Beg. Coveting the inheritance of a rich relative, Ibrahim Beg, whose heir he was, he laid a deep scheme to secure it without waiting for Ibrahim’s death. Khan Beg was a dissolute wastrel who had been reduced to poverty by his own extravagance, and who knew that he might expect no further help from his kinsman. Ibrahim was married to a young and handsome wife, Chumbelee, with whom he did not live on the very best of terms, due mainly to the lying stories of a confidential servant, an accomplice of Khan Beg’s. One day in a fit of fury he forgot himself so far as to raise his hand against Chumbelee. The woman, goaded by pain and disgrace, screamed aloud in the full hearing of neighbours and servants. Next morning she was gone, and information was laid at the nearest police station by the manservant above mentioned that Chumbelee had been murdered. Officers proceeded at once to Ibrahim Beg’s house, and searched the premises. It was soon seen that some earth in the courtyard had been recently moved; on digging, the headless body of a woman was found a little way down. The body was identified by the manservant, who swore to a bangle found upon one arm, remembering that he had once taken it for his mistress to be mended. A slave-girl who did the household work also declared that the body was Chumbelee’s.
Ibrahim Beg was, of course, apprehended, and locked up, vainly protesting his innocence. His own story was that he had been stupefied, he knew not how, by some narcotic, and after his violent quarrel with his wife, which he did not deny, he had fallen asleep until a late hour the following morning. His jealousy and ill-treatment of his wife were notorious, and told greatly against him; the seclusion in which he had always kept her also militated against him now. So few people had seen her that there was no more evidence of identity than that already adduced. All that could be said in his favour was that without the head, absolute recognition was impossible. Ibrahim Beg himself stoutly denied that the corpse was Chumbelee’s. The trial proceeded, and ended in his conviction; the case was referred to a superior court, which deemed the evidence conclusive; the sentence of death passed was about to be executed, and Khan Beg was on the point of obtaining his ends and acquiring considerable wealth.
But now came the slip. An anonymous letter was received by a young English civilian who had charge of the district, informing him that Chumbelee was still alive, actually residing within twenty miles of the scene of her supposed murder. The magistrate, knowing it to be a case of life and death, straightway rode to the place indicated, a certain tomb occupied by a gang of fakirs, men of evil repute, whom it was necessary to approach with caution. The magistrate, summoning the village police to his aid, cautiously surrounded the tomb, then broke in, and searched the whole place. He came upon Chumbelee at last in an underground apartment.
She was, of course, forthwith taken out and brought back to her husband’s house. The whole plot was now laid bare by the manservant, anxious to save his own skin. He had long been in the power of Khan Beg, and agreed to assist him the moment a body could be found to be palmed off as Chumbelee’s. A widower at last consented to sell the corpse of his recently deceased wife, which they took and decapitated. It was the manservant who had administered the drug to Ibrahim; he made the slave-girl prisoner, and then carried off Chumbelee in a blanket to the fakirs’ tomb. Ibrahim Beg, when he recovered next morning from the effects of the drug, gave the police no information of his wife’s disappearance, for he believed that she had eloped and left him of her own accord. The whole of this pernicious plot was admirably planned, but it failed, as such plots often do, through the avarice of the principal personage. Khan Beg had refused to pay a sum promised to one of his subordinate helpers, and the latter had written the anonymous letter.
