N. Francis Xavier
Part XXXV, (Continued from last week)
Cadell read with fascination the story of Nayim Singh and Dulari.
After killing JoharNayim Singh turned towards Dulari, the blood stained sword still in his hand. His looks indicated he wanted an explanation from her.
Dulari was too scared to speak, but, she realized that it was better to make up with him. With sweet words she told how Johar had enticed her into the field and tried to molest her. She told him to forget what had happened and think about the present.
A murder had been committed, and both of them would be found guilty, unless something is done quickly.
When it came to sentencing natives, a judge may not take much time to award them the death penalty. They hatched a plan.Their primary task was to get rid of the body. They hid it in a shed till nightfall.
Once the Sun had set the pair set to work. They selected a spot in the recently sowed wheat field of Nayim. After marking a rectangular plotthey gently pulled out the wheat stalks from the soft earth and dug a pit. Then they dragged the body into it and buried it. On the carefully leveled surface they replanted the wheat stalks just as they stood before they started their work. After the painstaking operation it looked as if nothing actually happened there.
To account for Johar’s sudden disappearance Nayim Singh cut himself in the ankle with his own sword and reported that Johar had attacked him and run away after injuring him.
A search was launched for Johar. Johar’s family suspected something fishy but Nayim Singh’s money power silenced them. Dulari gave herself totally to Nayim. The corpse they planted in the field did not trouble them.
Soon the wheat ripened and was harvested. But, somehow, Nayim did not feel like cutting the wheat on the plot where Johar lay buried. When questioned he gave evasive answers.
Meanwhile Johar’s family got worried at Johar’slong silence. They expected him to return after sometime and make up with Nayim. But Johar’s crippled twin brother Ratheeban suspected that Dulari and Nayim must have got rid of Johar somehow. In order to find out the truth he pretended great love and affection for Dulari. He would frequently visit her place and praise her for her virtues. Soon he became a close confidant. He would also ask her sometimes about the uncut plot of wheat in the field. Meanwhile intelligence revealed that Nayim was having a proper wife in another village. The news so infuriated Dulari that she revealed to Ratheeban what had happened that evening in the wheatfield. She also told him the secret of the uncut wheat. A jubilant Ratheeban rushed to the police. The plot was dug up and the body exhumed, identified by the clothes and the flute it still clutched in its hand.
The trail of Nayim made headlines all over the country. He was quickly sentenced to transportation for life to Moulmein Jail. As was the practice in those days the prisoners were handcuffed and marched to the nearest railhead. Ratheeban followed Nayim’s convoy for ninety miles, jeering him and telling everyone about him. He did not notice that a veiled woman was also following the procession on a pony.
After a year it was reported that Nayim Singh had died in Moulmein Jail of a disease known as ‘atrophia’. Ratheeban felt that justice had at last been done. Strangely there was no Dulari in the village to mourn Nayim’s death. She disappeared soon after Nayim’s transportation. The villagers also forgot about Nayim.
Twenty years passed. One day a band of traders passing through the village reported that they had seen Nayim Singh at a mela in Hardwar and had spoken to him.
The news fell upon the villagers like a bomb shell.
Incredible as it sounded it aroused violent anger in Ratheeban. He set out to investigate the report. The search led him to a remote village in the Garwhal Himalayas. One look was enough to convince him that it was indeed Nayim Singh. He immediately went to the police and reported Nayim as a runaway.
The police arrested the man and questioned him. A second trial was held, creating much more sensation than the first. Many people felt that the man was a look-alike of Nayim and not the real Nayim. The accused put up a stout defence quoting many witnesses who would swear that he was not Nayim. But a clever Ratheeban, before the judges, pulled up the loose trousers of Nayim, and, lo and behold, there was the scar of the self-inflicted sword wound on the ankle! But everyone was puzzled as to how Nayim managed to be in Garwhal after being declared dead in Moulmein twenty years earlier? The prison records clearly showed that he died while serving his sentence.
Meanwhile, reading the reports in the papers a young man from Allahabad came to give witness. His testimony added an even more bizarre twist to the story. He told the court that twenty years earlier his family lived in Bareilly. His father was very sick and dying. One night he overheard his father speaking to a jail officer who happened to be a relative. The man told his father how he could leave behind a large sum for his family before he died by swapping places with one of the prisoners who was scheduled to arrive in the village the next day. The price was fixed at four hundred rupees, ten pairs of pearls, a pair of gold bangles and three ponies.
That night the young man’s father disappeared.
The next day a bag of money, jewels and three ponies were delivered at his house. For two days the boy and his mother followed the procession of prisoners on the ponies, speaking to a man wearing a hooded cloak. The boy’s mother told the escort that she had a brother among the prisoners. After a tearful parting the boy’s mother shifted from Bareilly to Allahabad.
The hooded prisoner was his father.
The puzzle was now solved. The woman who followed the convoy in the beginning was Dulari. Repenting for her betrayal she managed to bribe the prison officials into finding a suitable substitute for Nayim. After exchanging places with the sick man Nayim escaped and shifted to Garwhal where he started living under an assumed name. His substitute was taken to Moulmein where he died due to the disease that had already half killed him while in Bareilly.
Nayim Singh was again convicted, for the same crime and again sentenced to transportation for life, this time to the Andamans. Dulari was also sentenced along with him, not for life but seven years for being an accomplice to murder and for giving false evidence.
“What kind of criminals congregate here!” Cadell wondered. He sent for MrWhitby, the Overseer of the Female Jail at South Point.
“Well, Reuben, ensure that female convict Dulari is always under surveillance. See that she never gets to meet the male convicts, especially a man named Nayim Singh.”
“Sure sir, I’ll post Head Warder Guffarun to keep watch over her all the time”, Whitby answered. (To be continued….)
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