INDIAN DETECTIVE TRICK.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 420, 6 August 1908, Page 4

INDIAN DETECTIVE TRICK.

,A. very old Indian detective trick (says the Westminster Gazette) played its part in the arrest of the Bengali youth, Khudirum Bose, who threw the bomb which killed Mrs and Miss Kennedy at Mozufferpore. He was seated in the railway station at Waini, some twenty miles from the scene of the crime, and was eating a meal of rice, when two constables approached him. One of the constables noticed that the youth’s saliva had ceased to flow, apparently through fright at the sudden appearance of the policemen; and that, in spite of his nonchalent air, he was unable to continue his meal. The constable toyed with his man for awhile, and then, having his suspicions confirmed, seized him before he could fire the revolver with which he was trying to shoot himself. This system of detection, it is stated, is traditional among the Indian police. A suspected person will be placed with others, and a native inspector will mutter some gibberish over an old four-cornered rupee. Having thus worked upon the fears of his auditors, he will give each of them a handful of rice and instruct them to eat it as fast as they can. The guilty one, it is averred, will be unable to eat, and the strike of the salivary glands is regarded as furnishing a prima facie case for arrest.