How to get away with murder

CHENNAI: The British felt the need to inculcate manners and instill a sense of responsibility to the scions of princely and zamindari families. A prince was a blue-blooded royal. A zamindar was a glorified tax collector with some additional power and pelf, though it cannot be denied that erstwhile royalty had often been degraded to zamindaris.

On the west of Mount Road in Teynampet was a long tank. On the other side was the Newington House, where the British attempted to tutor the younger blue bloods. Lord Pentland laid the foundation stone and became a patron of the institution.

The school was funded by a court of wards to protect ‘minor’ heirs of these Zamins. So it was generally known as Minor Bungalow. This particular school was fast approaching its closure for there were rumours that along with the Ramnad Raja, the government was planning to start another school elsewhere. With less than 20 students as pupils, the school was not known for scholastics. Most would fall asleep in mid-sentence of the lecturer. Royal vices abounded. And boys were known to jump over walls to see the nightlife of the city.

And only, the sturdy European tutors came to administer this institution — some who liked to earn their salary and some who saw no harm in receiving it though they knew their strain was in vain.

Clement de la Hey arrived in 1902 as a Newington tutor and remained one for long, because he loved the social life in Madras more than guiding the royal brats. He was popular at the Madras Cricket Club where he bowled to the Governor and was invited to the hunts of the high and mighty.

Some things a school teacher, even if he were European, could not dream of getting in colonial Madras but the fondness which other men expend on their nearest and dearest, cricketing partners usually rival. The Governor himself made intermittent appearances to the school more to see his batting partner than the princes. But it was also an opportunity for the boys to have a ringside view of power play.

Clement’s sister Dorothy, who came to visit him, was requested to start the Madras Women’s College. She agreed to serve as the head of what would later become the prestigious Queen Mary’s College for just a trial year. And what an irony it was!

Having spent much of his youth chasing balls to the boundary and tigers to their doom, Clement possibly put off marrying till he was almost 40. After a couple of decades in Madras, he brought back a young wife to stay with him in school where he was the tutor and guardian of 9 princes. The arrival of a pretty European girl in the midst of young men certainly distracted the all-male student line up, to what extent nobody knew at that time.

On the evening of October 15, 1919, Clement returned late from the club and went up to his rooms. All of a sudden, 30 minutes past midnight, someone entered the principal’s bedroom and shot him with a 12-bore gun. Perhaps he was asleep or he had gotten up and saw his potential assassin. However, a man’s brain moves rather slowly when he’s preoccupied with his sleep, especially after a few pegs of scotch.

Half of his head was blown away and there was a big smoking hole in the mosquito net. His wife, who was lying in the next bed with her baby, woke up with a start. She then screamed for help after seeing Clement lying in a pool of blood. Not just his wife, but the sound of a gunshot also woke up the boys, as gunshots were an unusual sound on Mount Road.

How come there were guns in college? Well, the college encouraged the ‘princely sport’ of hunting, so there were shotguns kept with the sporting equipment, and almost everyone had access to the cabinet.

The Newington scandal made news — for all the wrong reasons, as very quickly, the police zeroed in on 2 princes.

Kadambur Prince Seeni Vellala Sivasubramania Pandia Thalaivar and Singampatti Prince Sivasubramania Sankara Theerpathi were arrested. The newspapers had a gala time and indulged in sensationalist reporting.

Reasons for the murder was attributed to Clement’s wife flirting with the students. Additionally, the victim’s racist comments, especially on the colour of the students, added to speculation.

The British population of Madras was baying for revenge. They wanted a quick trial and a verdict of conviction to show the ruled that the rulers could not be trifled without provoking a fire storm. But they had underestimated the Indians.

Singampatti’s father, well-connected to most Maravar royals by marriage, also had long arms and a deep pocket. He hired a top British lawyer for his son, and on his expert advice, the Singampatti Prince turned an approver and was conditionally pardoned. That left Kadambur as the lonely murderer and the crown’s witness. Kadambur was now sure to hang.

S Swaminathan, a leading criminal lawyer of Madras, stepped in to defend the Kadambur prince. In saving the prince’s life, his would change as well.

The trial was hastened, possibly egged on by the British community, who gave the prosecution no rest in the matter. However, the defense pointed out that with the prevailing European anger and sensational reporting in the press, had charged the local atmosphere with bias and demanded a transfer to a court in another presidency.

In one of those lightning flashes of inductive reasoning, the British realised the situation had cyclonic potentialities of scandal. They were embarrassed by the victim’s honour being questioned and wanted to shut it down.

Under pressure from the higher quarters, the reluctant prosecution made Clement’s wife leave India with the court’s approval. They perhaps were bewildered how to run the case without their star witness. Apart from the other witnesses who arrived at the scene after the shot was fired, the prosecution lacked any solid evidence. So, to them the case looked morose and its end gloomy.

The case shifted to Bombay, and the Chief Justice of Bombay Court insisted on handling this case. The defence was well planned, earnest and animated. They brought in fire arm experts and even accused the approver of being the real culprit.

The prosecution’s theories were, at best, vague. The jurors were doubtful about the prosecution as the case dragged on. With the only eyewitness gone, the case listed to one side like a torpedoed ship.

At the end of the four-day trial, on Feb 5, 1920, the jury unanimously pronounced Kadambur not guilty. The audience in the court reportedly cheered on lustily. Thus the trail of who could have been the murderer went cold.

Swaminathan returned triumphantly to Madras but to his surprise, his neo European lifestyle took a blow when his English friends and families boycotted him for having let a native murderer off the hook of murdering one of their own.

His wife Ammu took it upon herself to remould their family as Indians. She would go on to fight for freedom, court arrest and even be on the committee that wrote the Indian constitution.

Ammu’s daughter went a step ahead and fought with Netaji in the Indian National Army that was hacking its way through the Burmese jungles to capture India by force. Lakshmi Sehgal also headed the Jhansi regiment. Ammu’s other daughter Mrinalini married Vikram Sarabhai, became a famous dancer and started the Darpana in Ahmedabad.

As for the Newington School, it did not survive the scandal for long and having proved to be counter-productive to original founding principles was shut down shortly. The building was used for several clerical activities for the government health section’s accounts department till it became an historic pile.