3 Review(s)

Mahathma Gandhi was assassinated on 30th January 1948. Nathuram Vinayak Godse and 11 others were prosecuted. N.V. Godse and N.D. Apte were hanged. V.R. Karkare, Madanlal K Pahwa, and Gopal V Godse were given Life Imprisonment (Transportation for Life). V.D. Savarkar was acquitted at the Trial Court itself. Shankar Kistaaya and Dattatraya S. Parchure were given life-imprisonment at the Trial but acquitted in the appeal. One of the accused Digambar R Badge became the Approver and was tendered a General Pardon. Gangadhar S Dandwate, Gangadhar Jadhav, and Suryadeo Sharma (all the three from Gwalior) declared “absconding accused” and were not traceable for decades. The intriguing point in this bizarre assassination is that the accused were neither laymen nor vagabonds except Shankar Kistayya. Among them there was a Lawyer, a Doctor, a Sub-Inspector, a Mathematics Professor, a journalist, an hotelier, a Government Servant in Ordnance Factory, and of course there was a black-marketeer in arms and ammunitions. A blind patriotic fanaticism was a common integrating factor among the accused. The Trial Court Judgement has clearly sent a stern signal to the present generation that “Law will not leave the perpetrators of crime” whatever be their academic qualification or their position in the society. This book is a sincere attempt to “photograph” the events connected to Mahathma Gandhi’s assassination through the Trial Court Judgement with ample photographs and umpteen illustrations.