A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Norman Chevers
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    or five fingers, the corpse of the child, with the head nearly cut off, but with all its ornaments on. Upon repairing to Chittooa's house, under a large heap of kundahs, was found the ghurasa, with which the murder was committed, covered with fresh blood ; this was recognised by two lohars as having been made by them for the prisoner. Chittooa said that he and Doorja, an accomplice, called the child, when Doorja, having opened the lock of Thakoor's house with a stick, took the boy in, and, having gagged his mouth with a cloth, cut his throat with the ghurasa. The padlock was produced in Court. It was the commonest description of native lock, and was easily opened before the Judge with a small piece of bamboo. Chittooa was sentenced to death.* In a trial of certain persons, Hindus and Mussulmans, for the murder of a Hindu and his mistress, in Zillah Dinagepore, in 1856, two of the Hindu prisoners are stated to have confessed that it was originally plotted that the xoomarCs body should be buried in some Mussulman grave, and that the man's should be left in his house, that it might appear that he had been murdered by his concubine. It, however, appears that it was decided to sink the woman's body in the river.f Many instances will be found in the Criminal Records of the N. W. Provinces (where wheat is plentiful) in which dead bodies have been coucealed in dwellings and out-houses under Heaps op Bran or Chafp (Bhoosa),\ In that part of the country also, the Holes of Porcupines afford ready places of concealment for the corpses of murdered persons.§ Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together—is a fact, which has daily illustration in India, and which has often been turned to good account in searches for the remains of missing individuals. Cases in which attention was called to a murdered body by the noise of crows hovering over it :—Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 30th January 1852. Crows and Vultures, Ibid, 17th Septem- ber of the same year. Jackals and Vultures, Ibid, 29th April 1853, p. 618. Vultures, Ibid, 3rd June of the same year, p. 743. Kites and Vultures, Ibid, 30th August of the same year. Nizamut Adawlut * Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 2nd October 1852, p. 1121. f Nizamut Adawlut Reports, Vol. VI., of 1856, p. 856. % Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 20th July 1853, p. 880 ; 20th March 1854, p. 324 ; 12th May 1854, p. 514; 2nd September 1854, p. 310 ; 23rd October of same year. p. 602 ; 3rd March 1855, p. 297. It is worthy of notice that, in all of these six cases, the bodies were those of children murdered for the sake of their ornaments; and that, in all but one (in which it does not appear that the body was actually buried in the chaff), death had been caused by strangulation. § For instances of this mode of concealment, see Nizamut Adawlut Reports, N. W. P., 30th September 1852, p. 1095, a boy aged 12. Tbid, 27th January 1853,]). 112, body of a man. Ibid, 6th May 1854, p. 485, body of an adult female. Also 10th October of same, \<;ii- p, 512, of a boy aged 14 years.