“GERM MURDER” CASE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 11, 14 January 1936, Page 7

“GERM MURDER” CASE

TWO SENTENCES COMMUTED ACCUSED TO BE DEPORTED USED GERMS AS WEAPONS OF DEATH [By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright] LONDON, Jan. 11. The Times Calcutta correspondent says that an appeal in the ‘‘germ murder,” which judges have declared unique in the annals of crime, resulted in two death sentences being commuted to transportation for life to the Andaman Islands. The accused, Benayendranath Pandey and Dr. Taranath Battacharya, were convicted of conspiring to murder Amarendranatii Pandey, a rich landholder, by plague bacillus injected by an unknown man who rushed by him at the railways station in Calcutta when in company with Benayendranath, who was his step-brother. After failure of the attempt to infect him by smearing bacillus c-u his spectacles, the prosecution alleged that Bhattacharya, who is a worker on cultures, obtained bacillus from a laboratory in Bombay. A tell-tale feature of Amareudranath’s death was when a blood test revealed plague, which was quiescent. The original hearing lasted for 140 days, there being 85 witnesses. The evidence disclosed that Benayendranath, in the event of Amarendranatii ? s death, would succeed to the estate and £5OOO a year. The trial Judge rejected the recommendation for mercy on the grounds that the murder was diabolically conceived, and cold-bloodedly executed. The appeal Judges commuted the hanging as the convicted men had been ten months under sentence, and also hoped that the commuting would lead to the discovery of the actual perpetra-