At a Calcutta railway station many months ago promenaded one Amarendra Nath Pandey, a rich, youngish man who feared assassination. Warrant for his fear-someone (his stepbrother, he suspected) had dabbed lockjaw germs on the nosepiece of his spectacles. The germs had almost caused his death.
As Amarendra Pandey cautiously promenaded, a short black man brushed by and pricked his arm with a needle. Benayendra Nath Pandey, the stepbrother, rushed out of nowhere and vigorously rubbed the arm. In a few days Amarendra was dead of plague, and with suspicious alacrity Benayendra laid claim to his heritage.
Investigation disclosed that three doctors connived in cunning Benayendra Pandey's plot and got him the germs from the All-India Institute of Health and the Bombay Municipal Hospital (TIME, Aug. 6). Last week at Calcutta the trial of the quartet for murder came to its end. The prosecutor called the case ' unparalleled in the annals of crime in India in its enormity and well-planned scientific design . . . diabolical ingenuity.' Benayendra Pandey and Dr. Taranath Bayttachra were found guilty. The jury recommended mercy. Barked the judge: "The murder is too heinous to warrant clemency."