No one knows exactly at what time Nathuram and Apte went to see Lahiri, nor how long they stayed with him. The question assumed importance later on because that morning someone booked a trunk call to Bombay from Lahiri’s office number.
In the India of those days a trunk call entailed all the tiresome paperwork that is normally associated with making an insurance claim. The call had to be ‘booked’ at the telephone exchange where the number of the caller, the time of booking the call, the number of the person called, the names of the particular persons with whom the caller wished to speak, the priority (ordinary or, at double rates, urgent) that was to be accorded to the call, the time of the call coming through, the duration of the conversation, and the cost of the call were meticulously recorded in a register.
And because long-distance telephone calls were important transactions, there was, of course, no question of any outsider making one without the knowledge and permission of the subscriber. It was thus most improbable that Lahiri or someone in a position of authority in his organization should not know who had booked the call.
This call, an urgent one, was booked at 9.20 a.m. The number called in Bombay was that of Savarkar’s house. The names of the people to whom the caller wished to speak were given as G. Damle, Savarkar’s secretary; or Appa Kasar, Savarkar’s bodyguard.
Later the investigators sought to make capital out of this call by contending that it was made by Nathuram to discover from Savarkar’s house whether Gopal had passed through Bombay. This was all of a piece with their general belief that all the conspirators received instructions or at least blessings from Savarkar before they proceeded to Delhi. Gopal maintained stoutly to the author that he did not even know where Savarkar’s house was. On the other hand, there were dozens of perfectly good reasons why the Hindu Mahasabha’s Secretary in Delhi might have wanted to speak to Savarkar or at least to pass on a message to him through one of his lieutenants. After all, Savarkar was to the Mahasabha what Gandhi was to the Congress, the top man in the party irrespective of who happened to be its elected president. And Lahiri, it must be remembered, was on the point of making an announcement that was bound to bring on a storm of protests from the public as well as the government.
But, in the face of the witch-hunting zeal that suddenly overtook officials and politicians alike in the wake of Gandhi’s murder, no one wanted to confess to having called up Savarkar’s house, so that the mystery of who made the call was never solved. The police contention that it was Nathuram who had made it could not be sustained. But, even if it had been, it would still not have served their purpose, because the call never came through. After waiting till 11.30, whoever had booked it cancelled it. The only purpose the call served was to plant a glaringly conspicuous clue for the investigators to connect Savarkar’s name with the plot to kill Gandhi.
But, according to Karkare; at least an hour before that time, while all of them were anxiously waiting in his room wondering what to do, they heard a tonga driving up and went out to see who its passengers might be. There was only one passenger — Gopal.
They pulled him into the room and the first thing they asked him was whether he had brought the revolver. He had. After that, Apte, Nathuram and Karkare left him in the room to have a bath and rest, and themselves once again hurried off to Birla House for another tour of the grounds.
In the afternoon, Karkare returned to the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan, picked up Gopal, and went to his room in the Sharif Hotel. Here Madanlal and Gopal met for the first time. All three sat on the hard steel hotel beds and waited for Angchekar to return, to tell him that they were leaving Delhi and going on to Jullunder to see about a bride for Madanlal. After getting rid of Angchekar, all three went back to Karkare’s room in the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan. Badge and Shankar had still not turned up.
In the evening, while Madanlal and Gopal stayed in the room, Karkare went and saw Apte and Nathuram at the Marina Hotel, from where all three proceeded to the New Delhi Railway Station to meet the train on which Badge and Shankar should have travelled on the previous day, the Frontier Mail. Once again they drew a blank. Thinking that they had perhaps missed Badge and Shankar as they had missed Gopal, they went on to the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan and discovered that the two had indeed arrived. They had missed them on the station because they had come by the Punjab Mail and not the Frontier Mail.
There was no separate room for the new arrivals, and nor was it considered necessary to bother about one. Apte just told them to ‘sleep in the hall’ and that’s where the two dossed down for the night.
The Asra Hotel in Dadar is no Taj, and indeed it is doubtful if in the whole of Bombay you could find a cheaper place to stay. But its restaurant prides itself on its vegetarian delicacies and Indian sweets and, as the guests of the proprietor, Badge and Shankar were given a room to themselves. They had slept till late and eaten a hearty breakfast and then gone for a leisurely stroll through the Dadar Bazaar. Badge bought a cap for Shankar and some blankets for himself against the cold nights of Delhi. Around noon they went back to the Asra to partake of what the hotel called its Sunday ‘Feast’, and also collected from Mr Navre a basket of laddoos (a popular Indian sweet) to take with them for eating on the train.
Early in the afternoon, they took a local train to Victoria Terminus and hung about on the platform for hours before the Punjab Mail, an earlier train than the Frontier Mail which Badge had promised to take the previous evening, was due to leave. This time Badge bought himself and Shankar ‘intermediate’-class tickets, which were a little more expensive than third-class ones but entitled them to padded seats. They reached Delhi on the evening of Monday, 19 January. The time set for killing Gandhi was less than twenty-four hours away, and all the others had already gathered in the capital.
There was no one to meet them on the platform, nor was Badge expecting to be met. Resourceful as ever, he hired a tonga and drove to the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan. It was a bitterly cold evening and a steady winter drizzle was falling. They had not eaten their evening meal, either, but luckily the basket of laddoos was still more than half full. As Badge and Shankar entered the hall of the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan, they saw ‘Madanlal with one person’, who it turned out, was Nathuram’s brother Gopal.
The .32 revolver which Badge had managed to get from Sharma was still in Badge’s or rather, Shankar’s charge, the service revolver had been brought by Gopal, and the explosives had come in Madanlal’s bedroll. The two principals, Apte and Nathuram, had travelled ‘clean’.
The Delhi they had come to was a city becalmed after a storm, a city that was said to have been purified of its sins. The morning papers of the nineteenth described how its Muslim citizens were moving about freely and how some of them had even formed a procession and had been greeted by the Hindus and Sikhs with gifts of fruit and sweets.
This was a little too theatrical to ring true, and gave rise to the suspicion that things were being stage-managed by the party in power. By now, too, the tremendous pressure built up by the popular wave to save Gandhi’s life had subsided, and many people were taking a closer look at the peace pledge and discovering that it was not as unanimous as it was made out to be. The extremists in the Hindu Mahasabha in particular were clamouring to know how their local spokesmen had allowed themselves to be browbeaten by the Congress leaders into subscribing to the peace pledge in the face of the declared policy of the party to the contrary. This charge was stoutly denied by the party’s secretary, Mr Ashutosh Lahiri. He announced that neither he nor anyone authorized by him had signed the seven-point pledge.
But, even if they had not actually signed the pledge, the Mahasabha’s local leaders had not remained unaffected by the mood of the moment and, by allowing themselves to be persuaded to remain present in Gandhi’s room while the others signed the pledge, had given the impression that they, too, had signed it. To the Congress leaders, that was all that mattered. The crisis had been surmounted, Gandhi’s life saved. Now they were directing their energies to a massive
follow-up operation to make sure that, wherever Gandhi went, Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs would be sharing fruit and sweets.
But the Mahasabha leaders were conscious that they had been made to look silly, and Lahiri was desperate to eradicate the impression that his party had subscribed to the peace pledge.
Meanwhile, to stop the Hindu and Sikh leaders from inciting their followers again, the government had issued a ban on all communal processions and meetings, and Lahiri had to content himself with issuing a press statement. In this, after sharing the general feeling of relief that Gandhi had given up his fast, he pointed out that the representatives of his party had never signed the seven-point pledge, and that the party would never consent to the implementation of the pledge. He charged that ‘the fast had only succeeded in weakening the position of the Hindu in their own lands as well as in Pakistan,’ and concluded by reiterating ‘with all emphasis, that we dissociate ourselves completely from this suicidal policy’.
This statement was issued on the nineteenth; and Nathuram and Apte, who were given a copy of it by Lahiri himself, were intensely gratified. It was good to see that their party still stood by its pledges and refused to bend in answer to the call to save Gandhi’s life. Now that the moment of action was drawing closer, they were looking all around them for such signs to help strengthen their resolve.
The evening-papers contained another item of welcome news: Gandhi, whose health had been causing some anxiety during the last two days of his fast, was said to be making good progress, and it was confidently hoped that he would be able to attend the prayer meeting on the following day and say a few words to his congregation.
Thus, a practical difficulty was being resolved. They had come to murder Gandhi, but, so long as Gandhi remained in his bed and did not come out of his room, it was not going to be easy to carry out their plan. He was always surrounded by his favourite disciples, and only his regular visitors could enter the room. It was good to know that he was going to come out; it would be so much easier to kill him in the open.
Room No. 3, Servant’s Quarters, Birla House. On January 20, Apte took Badge and Shankar to Birla House and showed them this room, just four or five paces from the place where Gandhi used to sit during the prayer meeting. The plan was to shoot him from the rear window of this room. But it failed when Badge, who was to shoot him from the window, saw a one-eyed man sitting outside the room. Paralysed with fear, he abandoned any thoughts of killing the Mahatma.
SEVEN
Gandhi was the man most responsible for
the terrible events culminating in
the creation of Pakistan.
— NATHURAM GODSE
On the night of the nineteenth, Madanlal and Gopal slept in the room in the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan, and Badge and Shankar in the entrance hall outside. Karkare spent the night with Apte and Nathuram in the Marina Hotel room.
The drizzle had continued throughout the night, but had abated towards the morning, and by 7.30 the sky had cleared. It had been arranged that they would meet in the Hindu Mahasabha Bhavan early the next morning. But, at about 8.30, only Apte and Karkare turned up. They explained that Nathuram was laid up with one of the severe attacks of migraine from which he periodically suffered, but that he had promised to join them later in the day. Apte then asked Badge and Shankar to go with him to Birla House so that he could show them on the spot exactly what he wanted them to do. Even though Madanlal and Gopal, who had been assigned equally important roles in the murder plot, had never been to Birla House, they did not go with Apte even this time because they were waiting for water to be heated for their baths. Karkare, who had already familiarized himself with his working-ground, thought it a waste of time to go over it yet once more, and stayed on at the Mahasabha Bhavan.
Apte found a taxi and took Badge and Shankar to Birla House. After hanging about in front of the main gate for a few minutes Apte led them to the servants’ quarters at the back of the house, and they made their way into the grounds through the service entrance. Part of the garden at Birla House was what was termed ’sunken’, and the wide lawn that led from the main house to a small summer house was on two levels. Apte pointed out to Badge the place where Gandhi sat during the prayer meeting, which was on the raised portion of the lawn, and explained how this spot was ‘within four or five paces’ of the rear window of one of the servants’ rooms at the back.
This room, No. 3 was occupied by one of the Birla family’s chauffeurs, Chotu Ram, and the window in it was actually a decorative ventilation-grille in the wall formed by ‘leaving out bits of masonry’. An excellent description of this grille is given in the testimony of Sardar Jaswant Singh, Deputy Superintendent of the Delhi Police, who actually ‘measured the dimensions of the trellis work.’
It is not a straight trellis work... the various openings are not of the same size and shape... none of the openings is rectangular in shape... the size of the biggest holes is 6” x 3”. There are eight such holes. There are in all 26 holes in the trellis work.
Apte sauntered close to this grille and, according to Badge, ‘took measurements of the opening with a piece of string.’
Apte himself had never thrown a grenade in his life. Indeed, he still believed that the only way to extract the pin holding the striker in position was to pull it out with one’s teeth. It is also doubtful whether he had ever actually fired a revolver. All the same, he now pronounced that through a hole in a grille ‘a revolver could be fired and also a hand grenade could be thrown.’
After that he guided the other two back to the servants’ quarters and pointed out the room with the grille which they had seen from the other side. He told Badge that all he had to do was to enter the room on the pretext of wanting to take a photograph, shoot Gandhi through the grille and follow this up by shoving a grenade through the hole and into the congregation.
Neither Apte nor Badge had entered the room itself, but both seemed satisfied that it would serve their purpose. And as to Shankar, since Apte had been explaining things to Badge in an undertone and in Marathi, which Shankar hardly understood, he still had no idea why he had been taken on a tour of the Birla House garden or what he was required to do later in the day. Apte, now feeling no doubt that he had given his men a commando-type dry run of a daringly conceived raid, took them back to the Mahasabha Bhavan for the next step in the indoctrination of his team.
When they got there, it was already past eleven, and only Gopal was in the room, bathed and ready; the other two, Karkare and Madanlal, had gone to lunch. But Apte decided to put his team through another practice exercise even though three of its seven members were absent. ‘We’re going into the wood at the back to try out the two revolvers,’ he told the others.
What happened at this firing practice bordered on farce, though the actors themselves were so desperately serious about their roles. As Badge recalls it, ‘On reaching the jungle, Apte asked Gopal to take out his revolver. It was taken out and, on pressing the catch, it was found that the revolver chamber did not come out.’
The .38 Webley Scott which Gopal had brought back to India had lain buried in the ground for nearly four years and had become encrusted with mud and rust.
Apte thereupon asked Badge for his revolver; and Badge, who never carried anything incriminating on himself if he could get Shankar to do it, in turn ordered Shankar’ to produce it. Apte then loaded the revolver with the four cartridges that Sharma had given with it and, handing it back to Shankar, asked him to fire it at a tree. Shankar said that he would not be able to fire a shot, but Apte told him to ‘Just press the trigger’. Then ‘Shankar fired a shot. The bullet did not reach the tree but fell down in between.’
Occupied by one of the Birla family’s chauffeurs, Chotu Ram, Room No. 3, as planned became the ‘Site of action’. The window was actually a decorative trelliswork ventilationgrille, with 26 openings in all. Neither Apte nor Badge had actually entered the room to see this window from inside, but they were confident that it would serve the
ir purpose.
Though the day – January 20 – had arrived and the place was fixed, the weapon was something they had to still decide on. A .38 Webley Scott and a .32 revolver were the two weapons they had. During target practice in the jungle behind Hindu Mahasabha Bhawan they found that the revolver was a ‘useless weapon’, and they could only rely on the .38 Webley Scott, which needed to be repaired urgently.
Badge’s revolver was a .32 and in perfect order. The trouble was that the ammunition that Sharma had supplied was either of the wrong caliber or defective.
Apte cursed and pronounced the smaller revolver to be ‘a useless weapon’. Everything now depended on Gopal’s revolver being repaired in time. Gopal, who remembered that he had a bottle of coconut hair-oil and a penknife in his room at the Bhavan, sent Shankar to fetch them, as well as a blanket to sit on so that the cleaned parts should not collect more dirt. Shankar ran all the way there and back. They spread the blanket under a tree and Gopal began to scrape off the rust from the mechanism of his revolver while the others watched anxiously.
But soon there was a moment of sheer panic. They heard voices and had just pushed the two revolvers under the blanket when they saw three uniformed men approaching. The ruse they thought of on account for their presence in the forest was characteristic. Badge was made to lie down on the blanket as though in pain and Shankar rubbed the oil from the bottle on his ankle. Only when the men came close did they realize that they must be forest guards on their rounds. One of the guards demanded to know what they were doing; and Gopal, who had learned to speak Punjabi well during his time with the Army, told them that they had come out for a quiet walk and were resting for a few minutes because one of them had twisted his ankle. The guards appeared satisfied with this explanation and went on their way, but the panic had been too much for Apte. He told them it was no use trying to repair the revolver in the open and that they should go back and do it indoors. Thereupon all four went back to the room in the Bhavan, and found that Karkare and Madanlal had returned.
The Men Who Killed Gandhi Page 14