Mamta Kalia

ning.
The reporting of the ‘crimes of the
century’ is a result of this scenario, for which
purpose a Hindi newspaper journalist has to
go to Mussoorie to report on a murder that
took place there a hundred years ago. The
plan to write about such murders ‘in which
the court has given punishment but in the
minds of people there are doubts about
whether the man who was sent to the gallows
was really the murderer,’ is a result of an
editorial plan born of the new grammar of
sensationalism and the market.
The doubt over the court decision forms
a direct equation with the interest of the
readers – that is, with the size of viewership.
It is an index of changing times that the
amalgam of truth and gossip that used to be
until now material for crime magazines has
now been included in the editorial plans of
newspapers. And what the search for
entertaining stories in events suggests too
is this – “Such straight, simple stories in
which the real murderer was sent to the
gallows are useless for us. We need to
search for such stories in which an innocent
man was sent to the gallows; or at the least
in the narration of the story this has to be
proved that the man who was sent to the
gallows was innocent. It is only then that
the readers will take interest in our stories.”
From the womb of this crime story, a
love story is born. In the court version of the
James murder story, Corporal Allen is the
murderer and he has been sentenced to
death. When the Editor of the newspaper
describes the sequence of events in such
police/ court terms as murderer, victim,
crime scene, etc., what he actually does is
156 :: April-June 2010
to present before us once again the decision
of the court. This is the first introduction of
the sequence of events to the reader. Here
the Editor is playing the role of the narrator.
In Fr Camillus’s diary, in the entry of
August 14, 1910, the entire sequence of
events is recorded in the words of Major
Alberto. Here you also get glimpses of those
streaks of anger that had stirred up the tiny
Anglo Indian community of Mussoorie at
that time. There is no sympathy toward the
alleged murderer in Major Alberto’s
narration. Neither does he believe that Allen
will free himself of his guilt by confessing
before Fr Camillus. “I don’t think so, Father.
Before the court too, he stubbornly kept insisting
that he hasn’t committed the
murder. The police had taken him to the
crime scene hoping that he would break
down in repentance once he was there, but
the place had no impact on him either. As
a matter of fact he is a monster, and he will
never confess.”
A new face of this murderer is unveiled
in the subsequent pages of Fr Camillus’s
diary. We also get a different picture of Allen
from the service book that can be found in
Allen’s file. “While reading about Allen, I
was constantly wondering what happened
to this pleasant, light-hearted, playful
young man praised by everyone on the
night of 31 August 1909 and how he
murdered his close friend in the most brutal
way.” This service book of Allen must have
been presented to the court too but it does
not raise any doubts there, or arouse any
questions, as we can see in Fr Camillus’ diary.
The court gives capital punishment to Allen.
The system of witnesses and proofs on which