Tamil Nadu has witnessed just a few murders that have been unsolved. One of the earliest was the tenth Century assassination of Chola prince Aditya II or Aditya Karikalan, whose murder was maybe avenged, however lack of historic data had made it a thriller.
The murders of C.N. Lakshmikanthan (1944), Immanuel Sekaran (1957), Tha. Kiruttinan (2003), and Okay.N. Ramajayam (2012) are just a few current examples, in which, regardless of extensive public consideration, the culprits weren’t caught, or at the very least not but.
An early unsolved thriller that’s not remembered a lot is the sensational murder that rocked Madras in 1919-20, in which an Englishman was the sufferer and the teenaged inheritor of Kadambur zamin was the most important accused.
Shot in the head
On the intervening night time of October 15-16, Clement de la Hey, 41, the appearing principal of Newington School, was shot in the head at shut vary with a 12 bore gun when he was asleep in a mattress subsequent to that of his spouse on the first flooring of the college constructing which was additionally his residence.
Woken up by the report of the gun, Dorothy de la Hey screamed in horror as she noticed her husband mendacity in a pool of blood. She couldn’t see anybody else, however heard a thud. The police, who arrived shortly, thought that they solved the murder in lower than a day with a scholar, Seeni Vellala Siva Subramanya Pandya Tallivan, the under-aged (minor) zamindar of Kadambur, recognized as the killer.
Four months later, he was acquitted in what an article, printed by Bombay High Court in the Nineteen Sixties, described as the “most notable and spectacular criminal case ever tried” on its premises. The murder would ceaselessly stay a thriller.
The Newington School, which functioned on the present-day campus of the Directorate of Medical and Rural Health Services at Teynampet, was a residential establishment. It was supposed to be run on the strains of English public faculties to teach minor zamindars who have been underneath the Court of Wards system. The presence of minors gave the constructing the moniker ‘minor bungalow’.
At the time of the murder, there have been 9 minor zamindars in the college. Eight of them have been underneath the Court of Wards, whereas the minor zamindar of Singampatti was admitted as a particular case. Clement de la Hey, an avid cricketer who studied at Keble College, Oxford, was at Newington School since 1902. He was the brother of one other Dorothy de la Hey, the founder-Principal of Queen Mary’s College.
The minor zamindar of Berekai, one in all the pupils, was the first to achieve the crime scene from his room on the second flooring after listening to Dorothy de la Hey’s scream. He was additionally the first to say that he noticed the Kadambur and Singampatti minor zamindars leaving the scene. The police quickly after made him to present the info in writing.
The police recovered a gun and some cartridges from the floor close to the constructing, which, in keeping with their investigation, was thrown from a high flooring by the accused. The Kadambur and Singampatti minor zamindars have been arrested. Singampatti quickly turned an approver, accusing Kadambur of being the most important conspirator and the assassin.
The minor zamindars of Talavancote and Urkad the senior (a junior Urkad was additionally at the college) turned key witnesses and blamed Kadambur. Both claimed that Kadambur was conspiring to murder. While Talavancote stated he didn’t alert Clement de la Hey as a result of he thought he wouldn’t imagine, Urkad claimed he was threatened by Kadambur. At least six college students, together with Singampatti, blamed Kadambur.
A reportedly strained relationship between Kadambur and Clement de la Hey and an alleged racial slur used as soon as by the latter have been believed to be the motive. Leading attorneys S. Swaminadhan and Ethiraj have been engaged to defend Kadambur. The case was, maybe, an early occasion of the phenomenon of trial by media, which have been rife with hypothesis on the motive and the culprits. Apart from the racial slur idea, widespread and unsubstantiated claims have been made about the alleged flirting of Dorothy de la Hey with the college students.
Case shifted to Bombay
Owing to the intense public and media consideration that might prejudice the jury, it turned one in all the first main instances to be transferred from the Madras High Court to the Bombay High Court. Dorothy de la Hey, whose well being worsened after the murder, went again to London along with her little one earlier than the trial completed.
R.D.N. Wadia, one other famend lawyer, led the defence of Kadambur in Bombay, together with Swaminadhan and Ethiraj. Though one other decide was to preside as per norms, Sir Norman Macleod, the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court, determined that he himself would sit on the Bench, contemplating the nature of the case.
What the police and the prosecution thought as a powerful case quickly started to crumble as the defence attorneys tore into the claims made by the witnesses, bringing out the inconsistencies, half- truths and lies and making them look extremely unreliable in entrance of the jury. The defence went to the extent of alleging that Singampatti and Urkad dedicated the crime.
Apart from the witnesses, the prosecution lacked any stable proof. The defence, with the assist of fire-arm specialists, proved that the gun couldn’t have been thrown from a high flooring because it had no harm in any way. Importantly, it introduced out a letter written by Singampatti to Kadambur when each have been in police custody. In it, Singampatti claimed that he had lied to the police.
W.L. Weldon, who led the prosecution, tried to manage the harm by articulating, in his remaining abstract to the jury, that there was no cause to disbelieve the witnesses and “the defence had contended themselves by throwing an immense amount of mud on all in the hope that it would stick”.
Macleod himself noticed that the normal of reality didn’t seem like excessive at Newington. At the finish of the four-day trial, on February 5, 1920, the jury unanimously pronounced Kadambur not responsible. The verdict was accompanied by a “tremendous cheering unparalleled in the annals of the Bombay High Court” by the spectators who had gathered in big numbers to witness the trial, The Hindu reported that day.
Interestingly, the case would play an vital position in Ammu Swaminadhan, the spouse of Swaminadhan, and their daughter Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, taking main roles in the Independence battle. Captain Lakshmi recalled in her memoir that her household was shunned by English individuals, who have been hitherto mates, as they thought her father had allowed a local who had brutally murdered an harmless Englishman to flee.
She stated it took away their admiration for the so-called English honesty, truthful play and justice and made them cease making an attempt to mimic the English way of life. The interval coincided with the rise of Mahatma Gandhi in the nationwide scene and the household began boycotting international items.
As for the Newington School, it didn’t survive the scandal for lengthy and was shut quickly after.
