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FRAGMENTS OF A PRISONER'S DIARY
There was the case of an entire family punished on the charge of murdering one man. Altogether six, including two women. The father with one of his three sons was hanged. The remaining two brothers, the mother and a daughter-in-law-all given transportation for lifc.
The murdered man was the village moneylender. The family punished for murdering him lived on a few bighas of land, and was heavily indebted as all poor Indian peasant families are. The meagre means of subsistence of a number of hard-working people was at the legal disposal of the moncy-lender who held a mortgage on it.
The charge was that one day the money. lender was invited to the house of the debtors who proposed to do business over a friendly meal. It was alleged that the plan was to poison him ; but somehow he survived the murderous plan which, granted that the allegation was true, by its very nature, must have the criminal co-operation of the women-folk of the household. The wouldbe murderers, however, were determined to dispatch the benevolent bania out of the arduous life of collecting compound interest from a lot of people destitute of the means for meeting their legal obligations in full and promptly on demand. It was argued from the side of the prosecution that thc shrewd bania had smelled rats, and left the friendly feast rather precipitately; the father of
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