CLUE OF POSTCARD

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1065, 1 September 1930, Page 14

CLUE OF POSTCARD

SOLUTION OF SENSATIONAL TRUNK MURDER ECHO OF STRANGE CRIME His petition for leave to appeal having been dismissed by the Privy Council, a restaurant keeper in Allahabad, India, will pay with his life for a crime that was remarkable in many respects. It concerned the murder of Abdul Ghafoor, an optician, of Allahabad, whose headless body, packed in lime in a trunk, was discovered at Kial, a station on the Calcutta-Allahabad line. The man who now awaits his doom, Shishodar Banarjee, occupied the same building as Ghafoor and, according to the petition, there was only one meter to measure the electricity for the two shops, and the occupiers shared the cost of the current. The murderer, it was stated, cheated Ghafor by producing a forged receipt on a stolen form for the payment of the electricity. A charge was. pending against his brother, accusing him of stealing the form from the supply company, and it appeared that the strange motive for the murder was that. Banerjee wanted to get rid of the evidence against his brother and himself. The petition went on to say that on the night before the murder Banerjee attempted to burn down the optician’s shop. A fragment of a postcard, bearing an address, discovered in tbe trunk, was the clue that led to the solution of the mystery. The address was that of the last tenant of an unoccupied house in Hewett Road, Allahabad. The house was searched, and Ghafoor’s spectacles, a broken button and reddish lime, corresponding with the lime in the trunk, were found there. It was ascertained that Banerjee had obtained authority to view the house the day before the murder. After seeing it he made no inquiry about the rent.