The Murder of the Mahatma | G D Khosla (First Published: 1965)

This is a book of memoirs by a very distinguished Indian judge who in 1959 was promoted to the office of Chief Justice of the Punjab. It is largely taken up with criminal cases-of arson, dacoity, poisoning, vendetta, and so on-in which the author was personally concerned as a judge. Fascinating in themselves, these accounts are made the more interesting by the author’s hamorous and penetrating comments upon various features of Indian crime-the brilliant gift for perjury which some of his countrymen display, the long-term village, feuds that every now and then explode into violence, the subtlety with which alibis are faked and false identities assumed. The book ends with an authoritative and moving account of the murder of Gandhi, at whose assassin’s long drawn appeal against conviction and sentence of death the author sat or the Bench.