KILLED MAGISTRATE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 365, 5 March 1932, Page 22 (Supplement)

KILLED MAGISTRATE.

LIFE IMPRISONMENT. INDIAN GIRLS SENTENCED. Wearing red saris (sashes) and with tlieir hair adorned with lotus flowers, Santi Gliose and Sunity Chowguri, Bengali school girls, were sentenced at Calcutta to “transportation for life” for the murder of Magistrate C. G. B. Stevens recently. The* girls probably will be taken across the canal, 100 yards wide, which is the boundary of the adjoining presidency, where they are expected to spend the first section of their life sentences. They doubtless will be separated eventually and will be moved at intervals to gaols in other parts of India. Life sentence carries remissions amounting to two months yearly for good conduct, so the girls may expect to be imprisoned for about 16 years. As they come from respectable families, they probably will be nurses or clerical assistants, although tlieir sentence theoretically calls for hard labour. For 40 minutes the girls listened while the presiding judge read the judgment, which covered 26 typewritten pages. When the terms of their sentences were translated to them they shrugged their shoulders in apparent indifference. As they passed down the stairs to their cells one of them remarked that it was better to die outright than to spend their lives in a place like a horse’s stable. A few moments later tlieir clear, girlish voices could be heard singing Nationalist songs, one of which they had composed for the occasion. The two girls, both about 16 years old and students at the University of Bengal, approached the magistrate, Mr. Stevens, at Com ilia, with a request that he assist, them in arranging a swimming contest among the girls at the college. While he was reading the written request they handed to him, the girls drew pistols and fired point blank, killing the magistrate instantly. Then they surrendered.