Mumbai Fables Page 18
Nanavati drove straight to his ship at the naval docks and obtained a revolver with six rounds of ammunition, telling the naval authorities that he needed the gun for personal protection. He then drove to Universal Motors on Peddar Road. When he was told that Ahuja had gone home for lunch, the commander drove to Malabar Hill. He parked in the driveway of Jeevan Jyot and went up to Ahuja’s second-floor apartment, carrying the fully loaded revolver in an envelope. He rang the doorbell at around 4:20 in the afternoon. Anjani Rapa, the bearer who answered the door, told him that Ahuja was in the bedroom. Before the bedroom door closed behind Nanavati, Deepak Sampath, the cook, saw Ahuja standing in front of the bathroom mirror, combing his hair.
Less than a minute later, the servants heard the sound of two shots, followed by a third shot accompanied by a loud noise—the clatter of breaking glass. The servants, followed by Mamie Ahuja, who was resting in her bedroom, rushed to Ahuja’s room, where they found Nanavati standing with a revolver in his hand. Ahuja, clad only with a towel around his waist, lay prostrate on the bathroom floor. A bewildered Mamie asked what had happened. The commander did not reply. Instead, pointing the gun at the servants and asking them to stand clear, he walked out. Downstairs, the guard of the building tried to stop him, but Nanavati drove off, saying he was going to the police station. As he did not know the location of the police station, he drove instead to the residence of the provost marshal of the navy, Commander Samuel. “Something terrible has happened. I have shot one man.” With this confession, he handed over the keys to his apartment and asked Commander Samuel to give them to his wife at the Metro Theatre. Commander Samuel then phoned Deputy Commissioner Lobo, and Nanavati surrendered to the police.
These, in a nutshell, were the facts. The prosecution produced twenty-four witnesses and marshaled forensic evidence to prove that Ahuja’s murder was premeditated. Testifying for the prosecution, Lobo was about to recount the sequence of events leading up to Nanavati’s surrender and confessional statement, when he was stopped. The problem was that the confession was not admissible because it had not been obtained under a judicial magistrate’s supervision. After huddling for a quick conference with the counsels to consider this issue, the judge instructed Lobo to submit his evidence in writing. Lobo wrote his submission in dialogue form, which was entered in the case record, with the confession placed in brackets and excluded.23 However, his testimony that Nanavati had appeared in his office dressed in white shirt and slacks, which were without bloodstains or any tears, backed up the prosecution’s contention that the naval officer had shot Ahuja from a distance and killed him intentionally.
The defense offered thirteen witnesses of its own, cross-examined the prosecution testimonies, and furnished its own forensic experts to prove that the death was accidental. Its star witnesses were Sylvia and Commander Nanavati himself. For two days, Nanavati was on the witness stand, reiterating that he had not killed Ahuja intentionally. He claimed that he had gone to Ahuja to ask him if he was prepared to marry Sylvia and take care of the children. But instead of a rational discussion, a heated exchange and physical struggle followed. The gun went off in the course of the struggle. “If I had intended to kill the deceased (Ahuja), I would have riddled him with bullets as he was standing in front of the dressing table.”24 Asked why he had procured the gun, Nanavati stated that he wanted the weapon so he could shoot himself.25 Sylvia testified in support of the defense theory of an accidental shooting. Described as often restless in the witness stand, her eyes moist with tears, she acknowledged her affair with Ahuja. It was infatuation, the remorseful wife claimed. He had seduced her with the promise of marriage but had seemed to be backing away. That is why she had kept silent when Nanavati asked if Ahuja was prepared to marry her. She testified that her silence left Nanavati stunned and disoriented. The defense elicited this testimony to establish that the knowledge of the affair left Nanavati dazed and suicidal, that the anxiety about the future of his wife and children gnawed at him, and that he went to Ahuja to ask him about his intentions, not to kill him.26
Emily Hahn, the New Yorker correspondent who witnessed part of the trial, describes the drama vividly. The street leading to the courthouse was jam-packed. The spectators were “mostly women, who had, I thought, taken considerable trouble to make themselves look nice.” Women also lined the gallery leading up to the courtroom, carrying garlands for the commander. Viewers crammed the benches—“lots of women, most of them glamorous looking types,” one “dressed up as if she were going to the opera.” Hahn spotted Nanavati in a spotless, starchy white uniform bedecked with medals and wearing an expression of “polite indifference.”27
The Times of India, the premier Bombay daily, covered the trial in detail from the very start. Day after day, it reported the trial proceedings. Naturally, Nanavati’s and Sylvia’s testimonies received prominent attention, as did the defense portrait of Ahuja as a liquor-loving philanderer. But it also paid ample attention to the less dramatic aspects of the proceedings. Its overall approach was sober and balanced. Treating the case as a crime story, albeit a prominent one, the Times stuck to factual reporting, eschewing screaming headlines and colorful language.
As a weekly, Blitz obviously could not provide a daily account of the trial. Therefore, it was slow to pick up on the story. It filed its first report well into the trial. The editorial staff had reluctantly accepted that the weekly was at a disadvantage in relation to the dailies in covering the trial’s day-by-day developments. But Karanjia would have none of it. “Go ahead, go ahead. Start working right now. Money does not matter, but we want a front-page smasher.”28 The staff sprang into action. Blitz published a boxed item on October 10, 1959, entitled “The Nanavati Trial in a Nutshell.”
In keeping with its format as a weekly, Blitz presented the summary of the trial’s daily proceedings as a story. Also, its tabloid format meant that its predilection was to ferret out a scandal beneath the surface, find a drama buried in the cold recitation of facts. Thus, while its synopsis of the prosecution’s case was factual, the report on the defense plea was another matter. In contrast to the Times’s straightforward account, Blitz spiced up its summary of the defense case with verbatim quotations from Nanavati’s deposition. The commander had deposed that he found his wife tense and unresponsive to his affectionate touch on April 27.
“Do you still love me?” he asked. No reply.
“Are you in love with someone else?” he asked again. No reply.
“Have you been faithful to me?” Sylvia shook her head to indicate “No.” To Nanavati, “this looked like the end of the world.” He decided to shoot himself.
Nanavati, however, wanted to know from Ahuja whether he was “prepared to marry Sylvia and look after the children.” He went to INS “Mysore” and secured a service revolver.
When Nanavati walked into Ahuja’s bedroom and asked him “Are you going to marry Sylvia and look after the kids,” Ahuja nastily replied, “Do I have to marry every woman that I sleep with. . . . Get the hell out of here. . . .”
When Nanavati retorted, “By God, I am going to thrash you for this” and raised his hands to fight, Ahuja made a sudden grab for the envelope containing the revolver, which Nanavati had kept on the cabinet nearby. But Nanavati reached it first. Ahuja suddenly gripped Nanavati’s hand and tried to take the revolver by twisting Nanavati’s hand. During the struggle, two shots went off.
Already, Blitz had found a sensational angle to the trial and a bias for Nanavati.
The following week, the trial was on Blitz’s front page. A bold headline, “Tragedy of the Eternal Triangle,” illustrated with the photographs of Nanavati, Sylvia, and Ahuja, was followed by the story—“Sylvia Nanavati Tells Her Story of Love and Torture.” It reported a scene of hysterical excitement in the packed courtroom among the surging crowds who gathered to hear Sylvia’s testimony and to catch a glimpse of Nanavati, smartly attired in a starched white naval uniform. Given Hahn’s report, Blitz did not have to invent the hoopl
a. But the tabloid ratcheted up the public frenzy another notch by its reports. It gleefully reported college girls losing their hearts to the handsome commander. Some swooned at his sight. Others reportedly sent him hundred-rupee bills smeared with lipstick. “A few love-lorn nymphets have even made him offers of marriage, anticipating divorce.” While the crowd in the courtroom listened attentively to the counsels, “there [was] another mute and eyeless ‘spectator’ present—ahuja’s skull, an exhibit in the case, which [stood] on the table near the press benches, grinning sinisterly.”
5.2. Blitz front page: “The Tragedy of the Eternal Triangle.” Source: Blitz, October 17, 1959
Sylvia was described as the attractive blue-eyed British wife of the commander, clad in a white sari and blouse—an image of purity—and speaking in a voice choked with emotion. The article then proceeded to selectively reproduce dramatic elements of her four-and-a-half hours of testimony as a defense witness, beginning with a scene of domestic bliss.
“On April 27, before lunch,” Sylvia deposed, “we were sitting in the sitting room, my husband and I and the children.”
Bliss was broken by trouble.
“My husband came and touched me. I asked him not to do it. I asked him not to touch me as I did not like him.”
Defence Counsel: “Why did you not like him?”
Sylvia: “At that time I was infatuated with Ahuja.”
Sylvia testified that Nanavati just sat dazed when she confessed that she had been unfaithful. Then:
Suddenly he got up rather excitedly and said that he wanted to go to Ahuja’s flat and square things up. I became very alarmed and begged him not to go. I said: “Please don’t go anywhere there, he may shoot you!” My husband said, “Please do not bother about me. It does not matter. In any way, I will shoot myself.”
When my husband said this, I got hold of his arm and tried to calm him down. I said: “Why do you shoot yourself? You are the innocent one in this!”
After calming down, Nanavati asked if Ahuja was willing to marry her and take care of the children.
I avoided that question as I was too ashamed to admit that I felt that Ahuja was trying to avoid marrying me.
Sylvia deposed that Nanavati offered to forgive her if she promised to never see Ahuja again.
I hesitated to give an answer as I was still infatuated with Ahuja. As this was a question which affected my whole future I could not give an answer at the moment.
Sylvia admitted frequenting Ahuja’s apartment. Ahuja’s sister, Mamie Ahuja, knew of the affair and had allegedly agreed to serve as her alibi if Nanavati came to know of his wife’s visits to their residence. This account of subterfuge was followed by the mention of Sylvia’s revelation that Ahuja drank liquor. This disclosure was meant to draw attention to the discovery of twenty-three bottles of liquor in Ahuja’s apartment, a quantity far larger than that permitted in Prohibition-era Bombay. The defense used this revelation to paint Ahuja as an immoral playboy who habitually threw parties, where he plied women with liquor. Sylvia went along with the defense’s insinuation. More was to come. Sylvia said that Ahuja had promised to marry her several times before 1958—“the year of intimacy between the two.” But this, according to her testimony, changed a month or two after they had sex, when he tried to back out of his promises.
The deceased had given me to understand that he loved me and wanted to marry me and then he tried to back out of his promises. Having broken my marriage, I thought it was only right that he should marry me.
When challenged by the prosecutor to document Ahuja’s disavowal of his promise, she read out from a letter she had written on May 24, 1958:
Last night when you spoke about your need of marrying, about the various girls you may marry, something inside me snapped and I knew I could not bear the thought of your loving and being close to someone else.
The morality tale was set. On one side was an upright naval officer, and on the other, a liquor-drinking Don Juan. Caught in between was a remorseful wife duped into sexual intimacy by the immoral playboy’s false promise of marriage.
THE VERDICT
On Wednesday, October 14, Karl Khandalawala addressed the jury, asking it to return a verdict of not guilty. For two days, he dissected the evidence to argue that the charge of premeditation was unproven; Ahuja’s death, he stated, was an accident. He ended his spirited address boldly: “Commander Nanavati has committed no offence in the eyes of God nor any offence under the law of this country. I ask for no sympathy and no mercy. I ask for a decision on the facts of the evidence.” Chief Prosecutor Trivedi followed. Summarizing his interpretation of the evidence, he declared that the evidence proved that Commander Nanavati had committed a cold-blooded murder. He discounted the defense theory of a struggle, asserting that there was ample proof of intention. However, he conceded that, given the exceptional circumstances and the “sordid story” underlying the killing, the jury could return a verdict of guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.29 After the prosecutor completed his rebuttal of the defense, Judge Mehta addressed the jury, patiently analyzing the evidence and instructing it of its responsibility.
After the judge finished his summation on October 21 at 4:30 p.m., the jury immediately retired to consider its verdict.30 An hour passed, then another, as the tense spectators waited in the courtroom. The crowd swelled outside as office workers stayed to hear the decision. When it got dark, lamps were switched on inside the courtroom. Then, a little after the clock struck seven, the jury returned to announce its verdict: Nanavati was not guilty of murder. By an eight-to-one majority, it also rejected the charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
The courtroom erupted in cheers. But Sessions judge Mehta brought the noisy celebration to an abrupt halt. He declared that the jury verdict was “perverse” in light of the evidence marshaled in the trial and referred the case to the Bombay High Court, the highest court in the province, “in the interests of justice.”31
5.3. The accused commander. Source: Blitz, October 24, 1959.
The news of the verdict was the first time that the case made the front page of the Times. But it was a different story with Blitz. Having already elevated the case as its front-page story for weeks, Blitz greeted the verdict with nine pages of what it called a pictorial record of the case and a bold, front-page headline: “three shots that shook the nation.”32
Bang . . . Bang . . . Bang:—Three shots ring out one by one in succession. The shrill crash of window panes is followed by a wild scream. The scene is the ultra-modernly furnished bedroom of a young Bombay businessman on the second floor of a palatial building called “Jeevan Jyot”—“the flame of Life.”
A brief summary of the case was followed by a sympathetic profile of the naval officer, accompanied by his photograph in uniform. “Commander Kawas Maneckshaw Nanavati, exactly six feet tall, well-built and handsome, has spent eighteen and half years of his thirty-seven year old life in the Navy.” It went on to recount his training at the Royal Naval College in England, his war service, and Lord Mountbatten’s recommendation that he be trained for service in aircraft carriers. In England, Nanavati met and fell in love with the “delicately built, attractive, blue-eyed, brunette Sylvia.” After a month of courting, they were married in London and returned to India, where she bore him three children. He was promoted as the second in command of the Indian Navy’s flagship, Mysore. Aboard the ship during his last time at sea, the “thought of reunion with his pretty wife and three lovely children and meeting his aged parents fill[ed] his mind. His mind was overjoyed at the prospect of a new highly coveted post.”
But Nanavati’s world came apart when Sylvia confessed her affair with Ahuja. He drove to the ship to get medicine for his sick dog. But instead, he ended up securing a revolver from the ship’s stores. “I just wanted to shoot myself and I thought I would do that by driving far, far away from my children.” Then a sudden urge took him to Ahuja. In a rage, he entered Ahuja’s bedroom, shouting, “You f
ilthy swine,” and questioned him about his intentions. Blitz then went on to repeat Nanavati’s claim that a struggle had ensued, during which the gun went off accidently, killing Ahuja. The article ended with the question: “what is the truth?”
The answer was supposedly contained in the story entitled “This Is What Happened in the Bedroom of Ahuja.” It was a dramatic retelling of the “Eternal Triangle Murder Trial,” illustrated with the photographs of the main dramatis personae, the witnesses, attorneys, and the swarming crowd. Blitz boasted that the picture of Nanavati entering the court in his full naval regalia was an exclusive. Homi D. Mistry, the deputy editor, breathlessly recounted how he had scooped the pictures of a smartly uniformed Nanavati exiting the court. The problem was that the famous accused was whisked so briskly in and out of the navy car at the court’s rear entrance that there was no clear view of him. He had meekly offered this as an excuse to Karanjia in explaining the near impossibility of obtaining a picture. But Karanjia would not take no for an answer. “Nothing is impossible for a Blitzman,” he roared. A chastened Mistry and his photographer set about accomplishing the impossible. Help came unexpectedly. A man offered to stall the car long enough for the Blitz cameraman to snap pictures of a waiting Nanavati. In return, this unnamed angel did not want money but only a copy of the photograph. A delighted Mistry agreed. One day, while the police beat back the surging crowd and Nanavati waited at the entrance for the car stalled by Blitz’s photo-seeking trickster, the cameraman snapped pictures at “machine-gun” speed. These photographs became part of Blitz’s pictorial feature. The story depicted the homicide scene with arrow marks on the pictures of Ahuja’s apartment building, bedroom, and bathroom. The miseen-scène of the trial was set with the “cosmopolitan” crowds milling about, stretching from the courts to Flora Fountain.