'When I heard of Madanlal's arrest from Badge, I also left Delhi for Bombay. There I met Godse and both of us again decided to hold peaceful demonstrations in Delhi. Since we did not have enough funds to take volunteers from Bombay for the demonstration, we went to Dr. Parchure's home in Gwalior to get volunteers from him. But he was not able to help us since most of his volunteers had been arrested and the rest had gone into hiding. Nathuram told me to go to Bombay and at least try to arrange some volunteers for the demonstration in Delhi from there. Thus I went to Bombay on 28 January and Godse went to Delhi.'
Apte went on to say, 'I reached Bombay on 30 January and spent the whole day trying to secure funds and arrange volunteers. That evening I heard the news of Gandhiji's murder and the arrest of Nathuram Godse. I immediately decided to go to Delhi, but stopped, thinking that the police would arrest me because I am Godse's friend. It is false that on 15 January I told Badge that Savarkar had decided that Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Suhrawardy were to be killed and that he had given that responsibility to us. These are all absolutely made up stories.'
Apte also the claim of the prosecution that the train tickets found on him at the time of his arrest were stolen after they were recovered by the ticket checkers at various stations, adding that it was a figment of their imagination. 'It is again a totally fabricated and baseless argument.'
In the end Apte said, 'The prosecution has failed to prove any of the charges levelled against me. I am absolutely innocent, and so I must be released, post haste.'
11 November 1948: Apte was to answer posed questions put to him by Judge Atmacharan. Apte admitted to knowing Badge for the past four years and the fact that the latter had supplied him with weapons, bombs and explosives for use in the Hyderabad conflict. He denied having met Badge between November 1947 and January 1948. Apte said, 'It is untrue to say that I took Badge to the office of Hindu Rashtra on 10 January 1948 and asked him to deliver two pieces of gun cotton and five hand grenades at the Hindu Mahasabha Office in Dadar on 14 January 1948.' He readily accepted the fact that Nathuram had nominated his and Gopal Godse's wives as nominees on his life insurance policies and that he had signed as a witness on the policy documents. He also agreed about travelling with Shanta Modak, and Nathuram from Poona to Bombay and that she had dropped them at Savarkar Sadan, but denied meeting Badge that night.
Replying to the next question Apte said, 'The witness' statement claiming that I had gone to Dixit Maharaj's home accompanied by Nathuram Godse, Shankar and Badge, is false. It is also not true that Badge had brought a bag full of weapons, bombs and explosives, for which Godse paid him Rs. 50. On the morning of 15 January 1948, I met Badge at the Dadar office of the Hindu Mahasabha. But not with Madanlal and Karkare, as has been claimed by the prosecution's witnesses.' Apte refuted Badge's testimony that Savarkar had ordered the killing of Gandhi, Nehru and Suhrawardy. Apte also denied that he had negotiated with Dixit Maharaj to get a revolver from him. He said, 'Why would I risk asking a person, whom I only casually know and have no acquaintance, for a revolver?' Revealing the reasons for Nathuram and him travelling under false names on 17 January 1948, he said he had gone to the booking office and had met someone who was cancelling his tickets. That man asked Apte if he wanted to buy the tickets. This was the only reason why we had to travel under false identities. But even if I had purchased the tickets from the office directly, I would have booked them using fictitious names. The reason was that the tone of the editorials in the Hindu Rashtra was becoming increasingly aggressive and the government had warned us that if we wrote and published any article which encouraged communal hatred and extolled people to become violent, they would prosecute us. On the 17th, Nathuram and I met Badge at VT.' He said the testimony that his accomplices and he had gone to Savarkar's home to meet him one last time, was a complete fabrication and a lie. Apte rejected the prosecutions' contention that he had gone to the prayer meeting venue on the morning of 20 January or that he had tested the revolvers in the forest behind the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan. Explaining the reason why he had abandoned the plan to hold a demonstration on 20 January, Apte said, 'I left for Birla House at 4.30 pm, I met Shankar and Badge on the way and took them along in the taxi. Nathuram stayed back at Marina Hotel since he had a severe headache.' On reaching the prayer ground he saw that none of the refugees he had met in the morning had turned up. 'I thought that it was essential that Nathuram Godse should also be present on such an occasion. So I returned with Shankar to Marina Hotel. Staying back was Badge's own wish. On reaching the hotel I narrated the entire incident to Godse.
'It is a lie that I met Badge that night at the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan. He came to the hotel from the prayer meeting and told us about the bomb explosion. Badge behaved very peculiarly and looked worried. It was because he had given the gun cotton explosive to Madanlal who had been arrested for exploding it at the prayer meeting. When I reprimanded him, he immediately expressed a desire to return to Poona. We felt that Madanlal would confess that Badge had given him the explosives, and the latter would implicate us so it would be dangerous for us to remain in Delhi any longer.'
12 November 1948: Apte said, 'It is wrong to say that on 25 January Godse and I went to the home of G.M. Joshi and we met Karkare and Gopal Godse there. Actually Govind Malekar had seen me in the Elphinstone Hotel at that very time. I did not meet Gopal Godse there.'
Apte accepted the fact that to come to Delhi. 'Godse and I booked tickets in Bombay on 25 January for the flight on 27 January, we booked the tickets under the assumed identities "D. Narayanrav" and "N. Vinayakrav".'
Apte accepted that on 26 January he went to Mata Mandir, but did not demand that either Dada Maharaj or Dixit Maharaj should give him a revolver.
Replying to another question Apte said, 'Godse and I arrived in Delhi at 1.00 pm on 27 January, by air. We went to some refugee camps that afternoon and left for Gwalior at night.'
'In Gwalior we stayed at the Shri Krishna Dharamshala situated opposite the station. We did not meet Gariba, Goel or Kale at Gwalior.'
Apte said, 'It is reprehensible on the part of the prosecution to attempt to prove that we had gone to Gwalior to acquire a gun. In reality, if we needed a gun we could have easily procured one in Poona or Bombay.
'Our objective in going to Gwalior was only to recruit volunteers to participate in the demonstrations we had planned in Delhi. We were very keen to stage the demonstrations before we were arrested. We were fearful of our imminent arrest, because we believed that if Badge was arrested in the bomb explosion case, he would willy-nilly implicate us too.
'I had decided to meet Dr. Parchure in connection with the demonstrations in Bombay itself, because Parchure had already staged a successful demonstration with his volunteers at the Moti Mahal Palace. We did not succeed in Gwalior, so we decided to go to Bombay, but Godse told me to leave for Bombay and said that he would go to Delhi. We might be successful in recruiting volunteers, if we tried at different places, it might also work out for the better.'
Apte branded a lie, the contention of the prosecution, that he had been seen near the Delhi station booking office, on 29 January in the company of Godse and that the next day he was seen by witnesses, in the retiring room of Delhi station, along with Godse and Karkare.
Continuing to answer the questions, Apte said, 'I had left from Gwalior on 28 January. The next morning I caught a train for Bombay at Itarsi. I reached Bombay on 30 January. Immediately on reaching Bombay, I went to the Chembur refugee camp to recruit refugees for the demonstrations. That night I decided to leave for Poona, but at Victoria Terminus station, I came to know that Nathuram Godse had murdered Mahatma Gandhi. There was a lot of disturbance all around, so I thought it prudent to stay put at the station.
'The next morning I met up with Karkare at the Victoria Terminus station. I got Mrs. Manorama Salvi to send a telegram addressed to the office of the Hindu Mahasabha in Delhi, asking them to arrange for the defence of Nathuram Godse. I met a lawyer who advised me that it was futile to go
to Delhi right away. That evening I met Jamunadas Mehta.'
Replying to additional questions, Apte said, 'I had stayed at the Chembur refugee camp on 31 January and 1 February 1948. On 2nd and 3rd February I stayed at Sea Green Hotel. From 3rd to 5th February I stayed at Elphinstone Annexe Hotel. I did not leave that hotel because the police was looking for me.
'From 5 February 1948 till 13 February 1948 I stayed at the home of G.M. Joshi. During this period Karkare met me four times. I went to Poona and stayed there from 8th to 10th February, but I left Poona since there the possibility of my arrest was much greater, because everyone knew that I was closely associated with Godse. It is true that on 13 February Karkare and I checked into the Pyrke's Apollo Hotel, using fictitious names "R. Vishnu" and "N. Kashinath".'
Apte refuted the prosecution's claim that his trousers were recovered from him in the office of the CID in Bombay. He said, 'The police brought a trunk into my room and gave me two keys. They asked me to remove a pant from the trunk. I don't know how my pant got inside the trunk.
'Before I was brought to Delhi, I met Karkare and Gopal Godse at the CID office in Bombay. They advised me to act according to the instructions of the police and to fully co-operate with them, otherwise I would be tortured as brutally as Gopal and Karkare had been. When I was taken to Dr. Parchure's home in Gwalior, the police told all of us to go to the backyard. I did not know how to go to the backyard, I turned towards the right but the police told me to turn left. I deny the fact that we had test fired the revolvers at that place.'
13 November 1948: Judge Atmacharan continued to crossexamine Apte, who said that he had known Nathuram Godse, Gopal Godse, Savarkar, Karkare and Badge before 17 January. He had also met Shankar Kistayya in Delhi, but claimed not to know Madanlal Pahwa at all. He was shown the specimen of his handwriting and the entries in the various registers and accepted it as his. He said that the incidents of 20 January and 30 January were unrelated. Even after the first incident, he had not even dreamt that a conspiracy to murder Gandhi was in progress. Apte said, 'To ascertain if there was foreign involvement in the conspiracy the police had shown me some documents. The police suspected that Great Britain and Russia were involved in this conspiracy. Later they realised that they were utterly wrong in their assumption. They arrested many Hindu Mahasabha and RSS members and collected a number of witnesses in an effort to build a fool proof case.' The court asked Apte if he wished to produce any witnesses in his defence. Apte replied in the negative.
15 November 1948: Reading his thirty-seven-page long statement in Marathi, the third accused in the Gandhi murder conspiracy, Vishnu Ramchandra Karkare, claimed that he was absolutely innocent. 'Me neerdosh aahe, hya kataat maza hath nahin, mala phasavla gela ahe', 'I am absolutely not guilty, My Lord.' He said that the conspiracy charge was very unclear and vague, and challenging the powers and jurisdiction of the court, he said it had not been given legal powers for it to be able to rule and give a judgement on the charges levelled against the accused.
Like Apte, Karkare too said that he was not present at the time of Gandhi's murder and that he was not, in anyway, involved in the conspiracy. He said he heard about it from some people and then read about it in the newspapers.
Karkare joined the Hindu Mahasabha in 1938 and later became its secretary, Ahmednagar district. He said he got to know Madanlal in Ahmednagar. 'I knew that the Muslims were annoyed with me and I was under close scrutiny by the police too. I went to Bombay in the second week of January. On my return from there I learnt that the police was about to arrest me under the Public Security Ordinance. Madanlal suggested that I accompany him to Delhi to demonstrate against Gandhiji's pro-Muslim policies. I agreed.' He agreed that he had gone to Birla House on 20 January but afterwards got scared on hearing about Madanlal's arrest and then left Delhi for Mathura; after two days he left for Bombay. 'I met Apte in Bombay and on the 14th the police arrested me.'
Refuting Badge's testimony he said, 'Badge is a liar, he is untrustworthy and has a habit of conjuring up stories; he is a person about whom less said the better.' He said it was unfortunate that a person such as him was born in Hindustan. Referring to the forty-five witnesses who had testified to establish his involvement in the case, Karkare clearly said that, 'All of them have lied; they have given convoluted, exaggerated and unbelievable testimonies.'
He rubbished the analysis of the handwriting expert saying, 'It is an abortion of justice that first signatures and handwriting specimens of a victim are taken and they are used to convict him in the court of law. This goes against the established principles of justice.' About the local train tickets recovered from him at the time of his arrest, he quoted a statement of a witness who had said that during peak hours, when there was a rush of passengers, some passengers went out of the station without handing over their tickets. Even about the identification parade he said, 'The chief presidency magistrate of Bombay, Brown, has admitted that he was conducting an identification parade for the first time. I understand neither Hindi nor English. Knowing this, Mr Brown did not bother to translate the statement prepared in my presence into Marathi so I could understand what was being written in it. The parades were a mockery of the investigation procedures and must not be used as evidence to prove our guilt.'
He went on to say that if the prosecution had claimed that there were 265 witnesses, why were only 149 presented in court. What happened to the other 116? Why did the prosecution change its mind about producing them in court? He claimed that there were discrepancies in the statements of many witnesses. He said that the testimony against him was doubtful and vague and he should be given the benefit of doubt; the court should declare him 'not guilty' and order his immediate release.
THE JUDGE QUESTIONS KARKARE
After Karkare finished reading out his statement in Marathi the court asked him some questions.
Question: 'There is evidence to prove that you had written a letter to Badge on 29 May 1947, in which you asked him to provide some bombs. Between July and December 1947 he supplied Apte and you with Rs. 3,000 worth of explosives. He had also sold a stengun to you during this period.'
Answer: 'I have not written any such letter to Badge. I always use my hotel letterhead to write letters. I have not purchased any weapon, explosives or stengun from Badge. I don't even know Badge.'
Question: 'On 9 January 1948, you, Madanlal, Omprakash and Chopra had gone to Badge's shop in Poona to inspect some explosives and bombs. Badge showed you some weapons.'
Answer: 'This is a pack of lies.'
Question: 'You visited Prof. J.C. Jain with Madanlal in the end of the first week of January. Madanlal introduced you as "Seth" to Jain. What do you have to say to this?'
Answer: 'It is a lie. During the period indicated from 8th to 10th January I was working in the Chembur refugee camp.'
Question: 'On 15 January 1948 you along with Nathuram Godse, Madanlal, Apte and Badge went to the home of Dixit Maharaj. A bag was brought in to the room and opened in your presence. Weapons, bombs and explosives were brought out of it. Badge and Dixit Mahraj demonstrated how they were to be used. Then the "stuff" was repacked in the bag and Apte handed it over to you with the instructions that you should leave with it that very evening for Delhi.'
Answer: 'These are total falsehoods and lies.'
Question: 'On 15 January 1948 before going to the home of Dixit Maharaj, Godse, Apte, Shankar and Badge met you near the Shivaji Press. You, Godse and Apte spoke with G.M. Joshi. After this all of you went to Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan, Dadar. You, Godse, Apte Madanlal and Badge went by taxi to Dixit Mahara j's home. Madanlal's bedding was kept in the taxi. What do you have to say to this?'
Answer: 'Absolute lies.'
Question: 'On 15 January Madanlal and you left for Delhi by the Express departing at night and reached Delhi at noon on 17 January. On the way you struck up a conversation with Amchekar. You told him that you were a Hindu Mahasabha activist and were going to Delhi on Sabha work. On reaching Delhi you introduc
ed Madanlal to Amchekar.'
Answer: 'It is true that Madanlal brought me from Bombay to Delhi on 15 January. I had accompanied him to Delhi to assist and participate in his wedding. Later, Madanlal told me that the Punjabi refugees in Delhi were planning to take a delegation to meet Gandhiji, and requested me to join them. But since the police were after me, I did not want to participate in the delegation openly. I told him that I would act only as an observer. I did not see Amchekar till the time that the train reached Delhi station. In the meantime Madanlal was trying to get a tonga at the station. I asked Amchekar, "Where are you going?" I told him that he could stay with us in a hotel. I took him towards a tonga; Madanlal was standing there and I told him that Amchekar was also a refugee.'
Karkare denied going to the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan with Godse and Apte, late in the evening of the 19th. He went on to deny meeting Shankar, Gopal Godse or Badge there, going to Marina Hotel to meet Apte and Godse and going to the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan on the morning of the 20th. Karkare denied being with Apte and Godse in the retiring room at Delhi station on 29th and 30th January saying it was absolutely false and a figment of someone's imagination. He claimed to be in Bombay then.
'I did not know Godse before leaving for Delhi on 15 January. I know Apte since 1936. I met Madanlal in December 1947. I did not know either Shankar Kistayya or Badge. I had seen Savarkar at public meetings, I have never met him personally.'
16 November 1948: Karkare admitted that the handwriting specimens taken at the CID headquarters were his, but denied that the entries in the registers of the hotels Frontier, Sea Green and Elphinstone Annexe were his.
'I met Apte at the VT station on 31 January. He was shell-shocked on hearing the news that Nathuram Godse had murdered Gandhiji.' In the end Karkare said, 'I have been arrested and implicated in this conspiracy by the police merely due to the fact that I was present in Delhi on 17 January 1948.'
MADANLAL'S STATEMENT
Lets Kill Gandhi Page 70