The Alipore Bomb Trial

THIRD DAY’S PROCEEDINGS 

     The further hearing of the Alipore Bomb case was resumed on the 5^th Jan. 1910 when Babu Nagendra Nath Banerjee, Vakil, addressing the Court on behalf of Susil Kumar Sen and Birendra Chandra Sen said that he would first deal with the case against Susil Kumar Sen. So far as the watch witnesses were concerned no reliance could be placed on them. The Sessions Judge in his judgment had said that no reliance could be placed on the evidence of the watch witnesses. Mr. Justice Carnduff, however, was of opinion that the watch witnesses were entitled to consideration. Mr. Justice Carnduff had not the advantage of seeing the witnesses which the Sessions Judge had and as the Sessions Judge after hearing the evidence of the watch witnesses could not rely upon them the vakil submitted that the Court would not accept that.

     Regarding the exhibits that were found in Calcutta the Vakil submitted that those exhibits were no evidence against Susil because in the first place they were not found in Susil‘s possession, secondly none of them were found to be in Susil’s handwriting, and lastly, there was nothing in those exhibits to indicate that the name " Susil" therein meant Susil Kumar Sen, the present appellant. The Crown wanted to put that evidence against Susil under Section 10 of the Evidence Act. But before the Crown could reasonably place that evidence under section 10 they must make out a case to show that there was a reasonable ground for believing that Susil was a conspirator. Unless and until that was found

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from other evidence, section 10 would not be applicable. So far as the exhibits and documents, found at Sylhet were concerned, they did not raise any reasonable belief that Susil was connected with the conspiracy, which was headed by Barindra Kumar Ghose. A mass of documents was found at Sylhet, but in none of them was mentioned the name of any conspirator or any of the places of the conspiracy. No doubt some of the books found there contained formulae for explosives, but these formulae did not in any way correspond with any of the formulae that were found in the Calcutta searches. The case against Susil Kumar stood quite aloof from the case of others. Further an examination of the documents found in Calcutta would prove that they were not conclusive evidence against Susil. The vakil then went on dealing with the exhibits that were found in Calcutta.

     Dealing with the case of Birendra Chandra Sen, the vakil said that the appellant was not arrested in consequence of any instructions from Calcutta. He was arrested by Mr. Kemp, District Superintendent of Police, on his own initiative after the search of the house in which the appellant lived with his father. The evidence of the watch witnesses regarding Biren’s visit to the garden was absolutely untrue and was not relied on by the Sessions Judge. On the other hand, there were numerous documents to prove conclusively that he was in his house in Sylhet in the month of April. The letter written by the appellant to the Principal of the National College, and the reply thereto proved that Biren was at that time at Sylhet. The rest of the evidence against the appellant fell under two heads, namely, the findings at Sylhet and the documents in Calcutta. The Endings at Sylhet did not in any way connect the appellant with the Calcutta conspiracy, while the documents in Calcutta were inadmissible against him as they were not found in his possession nor were they in his handwriting.

     The vakil then referred to several exhibits in the case and had not concluded when the Court rose for the day. .

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