The family then
tried, in vain, to get redress from all the local authorities, none
of whom considered it to be their duty to look after murderers and
robbers of this kind. Captain Weston succeeded in arresting this
atrocious gang-leader, Nunda Pandee, who described to him minutely
many of the numerous enterprises of this kind in which he had been
engaged, and seemed to glory in his profession. He mentioned that the
man whom he had seen suspended in the tree was his brother-in-law;
that he had had two other members of his gang killed by the villagers
on that occasion, but had succeeded in carrying off their bodies;
that Goberae, Bhowaneedeen, and the rest of his followers were still
at large and prosecuting their trade. Nunda Pandee was by the
Resident made over for trial and punishment to the Durbar; and
Goberae and Bhowaneedeen have since been arrested and made over also.
They both acknowledged that they murdered the Gosaen in the manner
above described, May 1851. The Mahommedan law-officer before whom the
case was tried declared, that he could not, according to law, admit
as valid the evidence of the wife and two sons of the murdered
Gosaen, because they were relatives and prosecutors; and, as the
robbers denied before him that they were the murderers, he could not,
or pretended he could not, legally sentence them to punishment The
King was, in consequence, obliged to take them from his Court, and
get them sentenced to perpetual imprisonment by another Court, not
trammelled by the same law of evidence.
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