Lets Kill Gandhi

by Gandhi, Tushar A.

  Vasant Joshi, a student and resident of Thana, was called in next. He said that his father was the owner of Shivajee Mudranalaya. He said he knew Karkare, Apte and Nathuram as the three had come to his house on 25 January 1948. He gave the details of what had transpired at his house. He also claimed to know Gopal Godse. Vasant went on to say that Apte and Karkare had stayed in his house till 13 February barring two days in between.

  26 August 1948: Aitappa Krishna Kotian, a taxi driver gave details to the court of how he had driven Nathuram, Apte, Shankar and Badge from Victoria Terminus to Lalbaug, Dadar and Kurla. He then mentioned that he drove Apte and the others to Green Hotel, Marine Drive (Sea Green Hotel).

  Kotian went on to describe in details the events of 17 January and informed the court about the places he had driven the accused to, right up to dropping off Apte and Godse at Santacruz airport. He also informed the court that when finally he dropped Badge and Shankar, Badge asked him for a receipt for the payment made to him of Rs. 6.25.

  The next witness was the Harijan MLA of the Bombay Provincial Assembly Ganpat Sambhaji Kharat. He confirmed the fact that he knew Badge and that Badge had left two 'bundles' with him in the month of January.

  30 August 1948: Gurbachan Singh, a Delhi-based businessman, was called to take the stand. He was a regular at Gandhi's prayer meetings and was present on 30 January, too. He said there was no one to make a path for Gandhi through the crowd that day. 'I was trying to overtake Gandhiji to get in front of him and clear a path for him, but just as I caught up with him, as I reached his right side, I heard a shot being fired, then another shot and one more in rapid succession. There was a man standing in front of Gandhiji with a gun in his hand. I immediately hit him on his hand; I think he fired the third and last shot after my blow landed.' Singh then walked up to the dock and pointing to Nathuram Godse, said, 'This man is the killer, the murderer of Mahatma Gandhi.'

  Then the court heard the testimonies of Prabhakar Lakshman Afale, a clerk in the District Magistrate's Office in Poona, who recounted all the fines levied on Agranee, Hindu Rashtra and the H.R. Printing Press. Madhusudan Golwalker, a ticket checker at Gwalior Station, informed the court about timings of trains arriving and departing from there.

  31 August 1948: The manager of Udyam Engineering Limited of Poona, Pandurang Vinayak Godbole, took the stand next. He said he had worked with the company when Dattatreya Vinayak Godse was its proprietor, who is Nathuram's brother. 'Dattatreya Godse has three brothers Nathuram, Gopal and Govind. I know all of them by their faces since 1942.1 also know Narayan Dattatreya Apte by his face. The engineering firm is in the compound of Vinayak Godse's house, the father of the Godse brothers. Eight or ten days before 30 January 1948, Gopal came to my house at half past nine or ten at night saying he wanted to leave a couple of revolvers and bullets at my home. The things were in a cloth bag, which I put into a trunk. On 30 January I heard the news that Nathuram Godse had murdered Mahatma Gandhi. I was terrified of being implicated in the case. That day my friend Gopal Vishnu Kale came to my house. I told him about the weapons and we decided to immediately get rid of the bag. But I was very scared and asked my friend to get rid of it.

  'On 8 February, just as I was about to enter my home, I saw Gopal Godse alighting from a car with some police officers. He asked me what I had done with the bag containing the handgun and bullets. I told them that I had given them to my friend Kale. On being asked, Kale said he had thrown the bag by the roadside near Ferguson College. We went to the spot but there was no sign of it. I was detained under the Public Security Ordinance till the third week of June.'

  The eighty-eighth witness was Govind Vishnu Kale, a resident of Sadashiv Peth in Poona who worked for the Military Accounts Division. He told the court, 'I have known Pandurang V. Godbole for the past ten years. On 30 January, I had gone to his home, late in the evening, I spoke to him about the murder of Mahatma Gandhi. I saw that Godbole was very anxious, on the verge of panic. He told me that he had a revolver that he wished to throw away. I told him I would throw it away for him. He gave me a cloth bag, it contained a revolver and five bullets. I threw the bullets near Ferguson College Road on 3rd or 4th February and the revolver on 7 February 1948.

  'On 8 February, Godbole and Gopal Godse came along with policemen to my home. Godbole asked me to give back the revolver. I told him I had thrown it away just the day before. I took the police to the place where I had thrown away the revolver and bullets, but we could not find them there.'

  2 September 1948: A first class magistrate from New Delhi, Krishna Chandra, testified that day. He had conducted two identification parades on 7 and 28 February 1948. He said that no police officer was present during the identification parade of Apte and Karkare. Chandra added that the jail superintendent had pointed out Karkare before the identification parade. He could not understand why no outsiders were part of the parade as he himself had got twelve prisoners to stand in the parade with the accused.

  Ramanlal Desai, an employee of the Bombay Baroda & Central Indian Railway, was called to take the stand. He explained in great detail the process of collecting tickets from passengers and then entering their numbers into a register every two hours. He first grouped the tickets according to the stations mentioned and then record the numbers. He said on 30 January he received tickets issued from Dadar to Vile Parle station bearing serial numbers 05830 to 05940. Ticket no. 05891 had been recovered from Apte when he was searched after his arrest, which was shown to the witness. Desai said that on that day they had been unable to account for tickets with the serial numbers 05830 to 05834. He added that all tickets that are recovered in twenty-four hours are bundled and sent to Bombay Central Station from where they are sent to Ajmer. After a ticket is recovered from a passenger no one has the authority to give the ticket to any other person. Ticket No. 05891 was a ticket for the third class.' Desai went on to say that the ticket recovered from Apte was not punched and so it must have been removed after it was entered in the register, but before it was bundled and punched.

  6 September 1948: Assistant Accounts Officer of the BB&CIR, Nathuram Agrawal took the stand. He said his department in Ajmer had received the collection report of the tickets collected from passengers at Vile Parle station on 30 January 1948. 'It is not possible that two tickets bearing the same serial number could have been issued on the same day. A hundred thousand tickets are printed for each station, even at the stations which see heavy passenger traffic, this quantity lasts for a minimum of two months. On an average about fifteen per cent of the tickets sold are not recovered.'

  WHERE DID THE COLLECTED TICKETS DISAPPEAR?

  Jayprakash Kudesia, a ticket collector working at Thana station, was called in next but Mengle raised an objection to his testimony as he would be speaking about the train ticket bearing serial number 2131 recovered at Thana station on 2 February 1948. Daftary explained to the court that the accused had collected many such railway tickets, which should not have been with them. He said, 'The accused has collected train tickets from 30 January to 14 February to establish an alibi for himself to prove that on 30 January 1948, he was not present at the scene of the murder.' The court accepted Mengle's objection.

  Dattatreya Ramchandra Kale, the chief agent of the Bombay Cooperative Insurance Society and a partner in Kulkarni & Co. was called to take the witness stand. He was present when the five accused, Madanlal, Karkare, Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte and Gopal Godse had given specimens of their hand-writing in the presence of the witness.

  8 September 1948: The matter of the objections raised by Madanlal's counsel with reference to Rajagopalachari's speech was brought up in court. Madanlal's counselsaid that since they had learnt that efforts were on to liberate Hyderabad and Madanlal was keen to be part of that, he had thus instructed his counsel to withdraw the objections earlier raised about the contents of Rajagopalachari's address to the nation.

  A COAT AND TROUSERS WITH UNUSUALLY LARGE POCKETS

  The 104th witness was Narayan Ganes
h Dabke, the proprietor of the Poona-based tailoring firm Dabke & Co. He informed the court, 'I know Apte because he has been getting all his clothes stitched from me for the past three years. His house is barely a minute away from my shop.'

  A woollen suit was brought into the courtroom and shown to Dabke, who recognised it immediately. He said, 'This was stitched in my shop. The order was given on 19 November 1946 and the suit was delivered on 5 December 1946. Apte had paid Rs. 30 towards the stitching charges. We had been asked to make large pockets both in the coat and in the trousers, which was unusual. The police brought Apte to my shop on 17 April 1948 and I informed them that I had stitched the suit. About ten months ago, Apte had asked me to accompany him as a volunteer with the aim of protesting and disrupting Gandhiji's prayer meetings.'

  9 December 1948: Police Superintendent of Gwalior Dinkar Pandurang Thorat Patil was called to testify. He said, 'I have been an employee of Gwalior state for the past eleven years. During January- February, I was the police superintendent of Lashkar, the winter capital of Central India. I know Dr. Parchure; he was the president of the Gwalior Hindu Mahasabha and the convenor of the Hindu Rashtra Sangh. His name was first on the list of forty persons who were detained under the Civil Peace Establishment Ordinance; he was arrested on the morning of 3 February 1948. On the orders of the IG, Parchure was handed over to the military personnel so that he could be detained in Gwalior Fort. I know Gangadhar Jadhav, Gangadhar Sakharam Dandavate and Suryadev Sharma. They are absconding.'

  Chief Presidency Magistrate of Bombay O.H. Brown was called to testify. He informed the court in detail about the manner in which identification parades were carried out by him and the procedures of recording statements.

  14 September 1948: CID Inspector Dasvanda Singh of the Delhi police informed the court that on 20 January 1948, when he had gone to Birla House he saw Madanlal there. 'While searching him, I recovered a hand grenade from the right-hand pocket of the coat worn by Madanlal. I took him to the spot where the bomb had exploded. A crack, thirty-eight inches long and nineteen inches deep, had formed on the wall due to the explosion.' Singh continued with his testimony of his visit to Marina Hotel and the Hindu Mahasabha office.

  PRAYER TO SEND A COMMISSION

  The prosecution had submitted an application requesting the court to send a commission to Bombay to record the testimony of J.S. Paranjape. Based on Badge's confession, some explosives were recovered from the homes of G.G. Shelar and NT. Nagmode. A sticky substance, suspected to be an explosive, was found in Godse's room. These explosive substances had been analysed by Paranjape. It was stated in the application that he had been grievously injured while testing the explosive substances and so a team should be sent to Bombay. (Paranjape was scheduled to testify on 23 September 1948. But since he was not fit enough to appear in court, his testimony was not recorded.)

  In the meanwhile, Dasvanda Singh continued, 'When I saw the accused Nathuram Godse he did not have a bandage tied on his head. He was kept in a tiny room at the Tughlaq Road Police Station. On 27 February, Apte was taken from Delhi to Gwalior and brought back the next day. On 30 January (this has to be a mistake) I had taken Madanlal to the spot of the explosion to carry out investigations. The damaged wall had been repaired. I don't know if prior permission had been taken to carry out the repairs. I did not receive any information from Sardar Patel or Morarji Desai with regards to the investigation. One head constable and four sepoys were posted to maintain law and order at the prayer ground. On 20 January Head Constable Dharam Singh was on duty there.'

  16 September 1948: Deputy Superintendent of Delhi Police Sardar Jaswant Singh was called to testify. 'The police stations of Tughlaq Road and the cantonment were under my jurisdiction. On 20 January 1948,I learnt that a bomb had been exploded at the prayer ground. I went to Birla House and questioned Madanlal in one of the rooms there.' Singh then gave further details of his visit to Marina Hotel and the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan and the searches he conducted. He said that Madanlal had been sent to the Civil Lines Police Station where he was detained in solitary confinement till 3 February. 'I learnt that Gandhiji had been murdered at a quarter past five in the evening on 31 January 1948.' (Jaswant Singh was very casual in his testimony since Gandhi was murdered at 5.17 pm on 30 January. Being a senior police officer his casual approach in testifying in such an important case seems rather strange; that too for someone in whose jurisdiction the crime had been committed.) Singh then went around Birla House and said that he did not see Nathuram there. (This again is, surprising that the officer did not bother to see the person who had been caught red-handed and kept on the premises.) 'I saw him for the first time at seven in the evening at the Parliament Street station. I had sent a medical officer to see Nathuram since he had given me a written complaint about the head injury he had suffered. At 9.30 am on the morning of 31 January, Devdas Gandhi gave me a spent bullet at the Birla House.' (In other records it is mentioned that Devdas Gandhi found the spent bullet which had gone through his father's body, in the folds of the khadi cloth he had draped on his upper body, while bathing his father's body the previous evening. Devdas Gandhi is reported to have gone to the Parliament Street Police Station late at night on the 30th itself and handed over the bullet to the station in charge. Nathuram in his memoir claimed that he saw Devdas Gandhi and spoke with him that night.) Till 11 February 1948 Nathuram Godse was kept at the district prison. 'I remember that Om Baba (a Hindu Mahasabha activist) had gone on a fast in January 1948 (this was staged to counter the fast undertaken by Gandhi) and had been detained at the Tughlaq Road police station. It would not be correct to say that when Om Baba's condition deteriorated in the lock up he was kept at the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan. He was released before 20 January. When Room 3 at the bhavan was inspected, Om Baba was not found to be staying there. (In the Kapur Commission's findings it has been stated that when the police checked the room on the night of the 20th, Om Baba was found to be sleeping there.)

  20 September 1948: The wives of Narayan Apte, Vishnu Karkare and Gopal Godse were present in court. Jaswant Singh continued his testimony, 'Madanlal was questioned by both, the Superintendent of Police, Delhi, P. Jagunnath and the Superintendent of Police, New Delhi, A.N. Bhatia. The Civil Lines Police Station is not under my jurisdiction. I had prepared a report about the wounds (most probably Godse's) on 30 January 1948.

  The next witness was Arun Karamchand Gandhi. Arun Karamchand Gandhi was a student of the Engineering College Poona and had acted as a pancha on 8 February 1948 during the search operation at Nagmode's home.

  21 September 1948: Deputy Superintendent of Poona CID N.Y. Deulkar took the stand and said that he had received orders from the IG Bombay to investigate Gandhi's murder. 'I saw Nathuram Godse for the first time at the Tughlaq Road Police Station lockup on 8 February. There were no bandages tied around his head then. On 11 February when I saw Shankar Kistayya, he was accompanied by Nagarvala. He then gave details of the search operations that he carried out. He also mentioned that it was his duty to collect all Marathi newspapers, and copies of the editorials written by Nathuram if found objectionable were submitted in court. The defence counsels raised an objection saying that these editorials would make an undesirable influence on the trial. The court, however, kept the decision on the matter pending. Deulkar went on to say that he had known Parchure.

  22 September 1948: Deulkar's cross-examination continued. He said that while investigating the Gandhi murder in Gwalior he did not prepare a case against anyone. He had questioned Kale and N.D. Parchure. He also said that he had signed a recovery memo of a stengun and had questioned the accused, Parchure and K.S. Parchure's wife.

  TESTIMONY OF THE ROYAL ASTROLOGER

  The astrologer of the royal family of Gwalior was the next to take the witness stand. Suryanarayan Vyas said, 'I am the family astrologer for the kings of Gwalior, Navanagar, Kashmir and Baroda and reside permanently at Ujjain.' He was shown an astrological chart, and he recognised it as being that of Parchure's fat
her, Sadashiv Parchure of Gwalior.

  Before his testimony began, Bhopatkar submitted an application to the court, which said, 'the prosecution had informed Savarkar that they would be submitting 143 letters, from Savarkar's files that were confiscated, as evidence in the Gandhi murder trial. It is said that out of these 143 letters received by Savarkar, 74 are from Nathuram Godse, 27 from Narayan Apte and 11 from Dattatreya Parchure. Parchure's letters are from the period between 1940 and 1943. The ones from Godse and Apte are from between the period 1938 to 1943. There are no letters written by the accused during 1946 and 1947 amongst these. The prosecution is relying more on 29 letters out of the 143. From the rest of the letters they plan to establish the relationship between Savarkar and the other accused Godse, Apte and Parchure. Savarkar feels that this is not correct on part of the prosecution. The period of the existence of the conspiracy is from 1 December 1947 to 30 January 1948. What transpired before 1 December 1947 cannot be used to prove the intentions of the accused.'

  The astrologer informed the court that it was not apparent from the birth chart that it was that of Parchure's father. There was no mention of the names of Sadashiv Gopal Parchure's parents. (This is not true as one's middle name is usually that of the father and in this case Gopal was the name of Sadashiv's father.)

  The prosecution then called two witnesses whose testimonies helped in establishing that Godse and Apte had flown to Delhi on 17th and 27th January. Another witness from Poona presented evidence to prove that S.G. Parchure was a student of Deccan College.

  27 September 1948: Inspector B.S. Haldipur of Bombay Police told the court, 'I was in the Anti-Corruption Department during 1947-48. On 12th February I had gone to Green Hotel (Sea Green Hotel) and made inquiries there, by the orders of Deputy Commissioner of Police Nagarvala.' He added that he had gone to Apollo Hotel to check the guest register and make some inquiries. He realised that of all the names in the register, two persons were not present in the hotel. He waited for them to arrive and arrested Apte and Karkare.