“Germ Murder” Case

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 10, 13 January 1936, Page 7

“Germ Murder” Case

LAND OWNER’S DEATH

United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.

LONDON, Jan. 10,

The Calcutta correspondent of The Times says tho appeal in "the germ murder,” which the Judges declared to be unique in tho annals of crime, resulted in two death sentences being commuted to transportation for life to the Andaman Islands. Tho accused, Bcuaycndranath Paudcy and Dr. Tarauatli Bhattacharya, were convicted of conspiring to murder Amaroiidranath Paudcy, a rich landholder, by a plague of bacillus injected by an unknown man who brushed by him at the railway station at Calcutta when iu the company of Bcuayendranath, who is his stepbrother. The prosecution alleged that Bhattacharya, who is a worker on cultures, obtained his bacillus from a laboratory in Bombay. The tell-tale feature of Amurcndranalh’s death was when the blood test revealed tho plague, which is quiescent in Bengal. The original hearing lasted 110 days and there were 85 witnesses. The evidence disclosed that Benayendranath, in the event of Amarcudranath's death, succeeded to an estate of £SOOO a year.

The trial Judge rejected the recommendation for mercy on tljo ground-: that the murder was diabolically conceived and executed in cold blood.

The appeal Judges commuted thj hanging, as those convicted had been ten months under sentence. They also hoped that the commuting would lea cl to the discovery of the actual perpetrator.