like disturbance which I can only compare to a storm
at sea—wind and wave surging tremendously back
and forth.... I recoiled upon the brick wall and leaned
against it, bent almost in two. I felt the consciousness
of the Mahatma leave me then—I know of no other way
of expressing this: he left me.”
The murder investigation was carried on by
Nagarvala as the special additional superintendent of
police, Delhi. On January 31, the Bombay Police took
Badge into custody—he sang and turned approver. Apte
and Karkare, who were on the run, were arrested from
Bombay later, and Gopal was arrested from Poona.
Badge testified that Nathuram, Apte and he had
visited Savarkar Sadan on January 17. He said that he was
told to stay back as Nathuram and Apte went inside, and
that he heard Savarkar say “Yashasvi houn ya [Be success-
ful]” while bidding them farewell. According to Badge’s
testimony, Apte told him while returning from Savarkar
Sadan: “Tatyaravani ase bhavishya kale ahe ki
Gandhijichi sambhar varse bharali—ata apale kam
nishchita hamar yat kahi sanhya nahi [Tatyarao
(Savarkar) has predicted that Gandhi’s 100 years
are over. There is no doubt the work will be suc-
cessful].”
Savarkar was arrested on February 5, 1948 and
the murder trial commenced in a special court
in a military building in Red Fort on June 22,- Eight months later in February, the special
judge Atma Charan of the Indian Civil Service
gave the death sentence for Nathuram and
Apte; life imprisonment for Karkare, Madanlal,
Gopal, Parchure and Shankar and pardon for
the approver Badge. Savarkar was declared ‘not
guilty’. Parchure and Shankar were soon let off
by the High Court.
“There was no tangible evidence linking him
[Savarkar] to the actual assassination,” says Arun
Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson. “But he plant-
ed the idea, encouraged its growth. If a father
brings up a child to be a murderer, the law will
not punish the father but the son, because he
committed the actual act. But morally, the father
is as guilty as son.”
On November 15, 1949, Nathuram and Apte
were hanged to death in Ambala prison. They
were cremated in an open ground within the jail,
which was then ploughed up and planted all over
with grass, so as to prevent any monument ever
being put up on the exact spot of cremation.
As the lifers were released in 1964, they were
welcomed back to Poona with fanfare. This led
to a public outrage and to the formation of the
G.S. Pathak Commission, to get to the facts about
the murder. But when Pathak became Union law
minister, the Justice Jivanlal Kapur Commission
was appointed in November 1966.
The Kapur Commission examined 101 witness-
es and 407 documents, and it was provided with
certain evidences that had not been produced
in the trial court. Savarkar’s close aides Appa
Ramachandra Kasar and Gajanan Vishnu Damle
told the commission that Nathuram and Apte had
met Savarkar on January 17, 1948. Kasar testified
that the conspirators had visited Savarkar again
on January 23, after their first attempt to murder.
The commission’s report, submitted in 1969, crit-
icised the police for negligence. In conclusion, it
said, “All these facts taken together were destruc-
tive of any theory other than the conspiracy to
murder by Savarkar and his group.”
It is this conclusion that Pankaj Phadnis wants
to disprove. ◆
Last
walk:
Steps
to the
Martyr’s
Column
in Birla
House,
Delhi,
where
Gandhi
was shotSANJAY AHLAWATTHE WEEK NOVEMBER 12, 2017^45