INDIA: The Whole Truth

Thousands of Indians murdered their fellowmen last year. Few were arrested, none convicted—because legal evidence is difficult to procure when the ordinary man counts perjury a duty if it helps a friend or relative. In Delhi’s dingy Sessions Court last week, a murder trial ended which demonstrated India’s problem of crime & punishment.

On the morning of Sept. 8, as rioting mounted in Delhi, a crowd of Moslems gathered ominously near a hospital run by a quiet little Hindu physician named N. C. Joshi. Even his Moslem neighbors in the slums of Karol Bagh district had known and liked Dr. Joshi for his work among the poor. This morning, however, the neighbors were armed with knives and spears. Dr. Joshi came out of the hospital. Someone fired a rifle. The good doctor dropped dead with a bullet in the skull.

Nothing more might have been heard of Dr. Joshi’s death if he had not been a friend of Mohandas Gandhi; when he expressed his outrage, Indian police set forth to track down the murderer. Ten days later they arrested Dr. Joshi’s neighbor, Moslem Dr. Abdul Qureshi.

Dr. Qureshi, charged the prosecution, was a Moslem League hothead who not only led the mob outside Dr. Joshi’s hospital, but fired the shot which killed the Hindu doctor. Furthermore, the prosecution produced six witnesses to prove it. All of them were Hindu or Sikh.

The accused doctor said he had been in Lahore, 250 miles away from Delhi, on the day of the crime. He produced a long list of high Pakistan officials as witnesses. All of them were Moslems.

No Moslem witness could be found to support the prosecution; no Sikh or Hindu witness would support Dr. Qureshi’s alibi. When the testimony concluded last week, the judge decided matters for himself: “The accused is sentenced to death.” The judge was a Hindu.