Word: gopal
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...morning Gopal Singh went out on the veranda of his house near the Himalayan foothills and handed his wife, Pyari, some women's dresses to hem. Said Pyari: "Isn't it enough that you should make your house a byword . . . must [you] bring your whore's clothes here? . . . Take back your filth!" Gopal Singh slapped her face. Screamed Pyari: "Why don't you shoot me? . . ." Half an hour later, Pyari was dead. Said Gopal's father: "We must say she died of cholera." Said Gopal: "She must be burned at once. ... It must...
Call the Next Witness reports how Gopal Singh was brought to "justice." Philip Woodruff (the pseudonym of a Briton who has worked for many years in India) never tells his readers whether Gopal Singh actually did shoot his wife. But he gives them an exciting description of the religious, tribal, political and human intricacies that make Indian legal procedure as cryptic as the Indian rope trick. They also make Call the Next Witness one of the year's most striking and unusual novels...
What Price Duty? When the local police constable told Sub-Inspector Ghulam Husain that Pyari had died and been cremated the same day, he hurried over to see Gopal Singh's father. "It's my duty," said he mournfully, "to enter . . . a charge of murder against your son." "Would anything convince you that your duty was different?" asked the father. Sub-Inspector Ghulam murmured something about 1,500 rupees ($450). "You can get to hell out of here!" barked the old man. "He'll hang," warned Ghulam...
...Gopal's family was rich and powerful, but Sub-Inspector Ghulam realized that, having lost his bribe, he must not lose his case. So he kidnapped a member of Gopal's household and brutally third-degreed him until the servant talked. But Ghulam did not hand over this information to his superiors ("It is an axiom in Indian courts that the police are never to be believed"). He sent it to the dead woman's family, who were as rich and powerful as Gopal...
When Pyari's family realized that there was not enough evidence to convict Gopal, they hired a brilliant lawyer and ordered him to manufacture the best evidence that money could buy. Then Gopal's family began to confect evidence for the defense. Both families finecombed their tenants and employes, singling out those whose lives depended upon their landlord's bounty, and ruthlessly training them as "witnesses." Others who yearned to stand in well with the British Raj or with the Congress Party were bribed with promises of political preferment. One clerk, who worked in the British magistrate...