A FAMOUS CASE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 682, 7 November 1933, Page 7

A FAMOUS CASE

INDIAN PRINCE DEPOSED FOLLOWING AN ALLEGED OFFENCE. POISONING OF A RESIDENT. | i From time to time the services of | leading members of the Eng-lish Par ; have been retained to conduet cas.s i in Indian Courts, and naturally big fees have been paid on these occa- | sions, says the Melboume Age. ' The : first case on record in which a mem- ' ber of the English Bar was retained ' to appear as advocate in an Indian ! Court occurred fifty-eight years ago. ■' Sarjent Ballantine, one of the leading j members of the English Bar at that j time, went to India to defend a ruling j prince, his Highness Mulhar Rao, the , Gaekwar of Baroda, who was accused i of having attempted to poison Colonel j Phayre, the British Resident of Ba- j roda. A special tribunal was consti- i tuted to hear the case. It consisted • of six Commissioncrs, including Sir I Richard Couch, the Chief Justice of j India, and tw0 ruling princes. Ac- | Goi'ding' to Sarjent Ballantin'es some- j what partisan account of the trial, ; given in his (book "Some Reminscences | of a Barrister's Life," Colonel Phayre j was entirely unsuited for the post of British Resident. "He was fussy, j meddlesome, ancl thoroughly injudi- ! cious," wrote Sarjent Ballantine. "There were two adverse parti.s ' in the S-tats, and instead of holding hiihself aloof from both he threw j himself violently into that opposed to I the Gaekwar, and was greedy to listen to every accusation and complaint that with equal eagerness was gossiped into his ears. His annoyances and j constant slights to the Gaekwar were j such that a dispatch was sent hy the latter to the Government, in temperate and judicious terms, praying for his removal." This dispatch was sent seven days before the alleged attempt to poison Colonel Phayre, and up to the date of this alleged attempt the Gaekwar had not received a reply from the Government of India. Moreover, Colonel Phayre had previously been asked to resign the post of British Resident by the Governor of Bombay, but had declined to do so. A few weeks after the alleged attempt to poison him "he was actually dismissed by the Governor-General in terms the reverse of complimentary," wrote Sarjent Ballantine. Warned of Aattempt. The Governor-General, in dismissing him, wrote: — ■"That he had thoroughly misunderstood the spirit of the instructions both of the Government of India and the Government of Bombay, and that the duty of Resident could no longer be entrusted to him with any reasonable prospect of a satisfactory result." Colonel Phayre had been warned from some undisclosed source that an attempt would be made to poison him. On reaching his home on the morning of November 9 he took a tumbler of sherfbet on his washstand. He took two or three sips of it, and "derived unpleasant symptoms." He sat down to write for about twenty minutes, but feeling worse, and being satisfied that his condition was due to the sherbet, he threw the remainder of the contents of the glass out of the window "that he might not he tempted to drink it." There was a little brown sediment left at the bottom of the glass, which, together with scrapingS from the ground where' the contents of the glass had been thrown, was subsequently analysed hy two doetors who detected traees of common ars'enic and finely-powdered siliceous matter which, under the microscope, appeared to he powdered glass or quqrtz. Before the analyses were made Colonel Phayre had received a confidential communication from a man named Bowh-Poouaka, a pronounced enemy of the Gaelcwar, stating that the poison consisted of (1)

common arsenic; (2) finely-powdered diamond dust; (3) copper. It was the general, but scientifically incorrect, btlief in Baroda that diamond dust is deadly poison. Colonel Phayre shared this belief. One of the doetors who made the analyses expressed the opinion when asked that the siliceous matter that had been in the tumbler might have been powdered diamond. Bivided Opinion. Evidence in support of the prosecution was given by a servant of Colonel Phayre, a' diamond merchant, and the Gaekwar' s private secretary, each of whom had previously made a confession after having been arrested by the policc. There was considerable delay in announcing the finding of the court. The three English Commissioners were of opinion that the prosecution had failed. No furth'er action j was taken, hut a few days later a : proclamation was issued by the Government of Bombay deposing the Gaekwar on the ground of abuses committed previous to, and unconnected with, the case of alleged poisoning. Sarjent Ballantine was paid a fee of £10,000 for his services, but he lost the greater part of the money in speculation on the Stock Exchange when he returned to London. The loss preyed on his mind and disturbed his mental balanqe, and in consequenee his practice at the Bar fell away.