The Secret Room Where Godse Was Kept After He Killed Gandhi

[timmy]

 The secret room where Godse was kept after he killed Gandhi

All India | MiD-DAY.com | Updated: January 30, 2014 12:26 IST

 

The room in the Special Branch office. Pics/Sayed Sameer Abedi, Sameer Markande

While Nathuram Godse continues to be a controversial figure decades after his death, few in Mumbai are aware that a 1,000-square-feet hall in the city served as a makeshift lock-up for Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, days after he shot the nation's beloved patriarch at point blank range.

According to a noted historian, he was lodged in the Mumbai Special Branch (SB) office after the assassination, so that angry mobs of Indians couldn't attack him in the jail lock-up.

And those connected to the investigations and trial that followed say that the room where he was held still holds secrets to the dark chapter in the nation's history that followed the assassination on January 30, 1948.

The room

Godse was kept in the 'C' branch of the ground floor of the Special Branch building soon after he was brought to Mumbai from Delhi in the wake of the assassination. Incidentally, the building also housed the office of late Jamshed Dorab Nagarvala, deputy commissioner of police (Special Branch). Nagarvala was appointed the Superintendent of Delhi Police after the assassination and given the task of probing the case, according to noted historian Deepak Rao.

The records section of the SB building, located on Municipal Street 12, Badruddin Tayabji Marg (Gymnasium Road) near CST, is a large hall that was used to preserve all the records collected by the Special Branch. The present staff, including senior officers attached to the SB, is unaware of the history of the hall. Their ignorance perhaps stems from the fact that all the documents pertaining to the investigation of Gandhi's assassination have been declared classified, explained Rao.

"Instead of lodging him in the general Crime Branch lock-up which is located next to the SB office, Nagarvala had kept him in the record room for a week or two. This was done to protect Godse from being lynched or attacked by a mob. He was then taken to different locations in Thane and Pune to assist in investigations into the conspiracy that led to the murder," said Rao.

Nagarvala and Rao stayed in the same building at Marine Lines, and were on good terms. Rao recalled, "On February 17, 1948, Nagarvala received a phone call from Delhi informing him about his appointment to probe the Gandhi assassination case. He was vested with the task of nabbing the conspirators and those who had supplied the firearms to execute the killing."

Rao added, "After the bifurcation of erstwhile Bombay into the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, J D Nagarvala became the first Inspector General of Police of Gujarat on May 1, 1960, and continued in the post for a period of 13 years. Following his retirement, it was easy for me to get access to Nagarwala, who himself told me about Godse being kept in the records room of the SB building."

While time has erased all traces of Godse's stay in the hall, secrets unearthed in the case are still enclosed in the very room, say sources. A former additional commissioner of police, who had served in the SB, admitted in confidence to having seen documents pertaining to the agitation and riots following Gandhi's assassination in the records room, and confirmed that all the case papers, including diaries maintained by investigating police officers were preserved and labelled 'classified' by the Government of India.

When asked to confirm the same, former Union Home Secretary R K Singh, said, "I am at a meeting."Former Home Secretary G K Pillai said, "Most of the top secret files were transferred to the National Archives. This includes those on Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, as most of them run into lakhs of volumes.

Only those records that may be termed sensitive information may still be in the Home Ministry records section. But I think that even the time period for a document to remain classified is only 30 years, unless any special order was passed by the government in case of Gandhi's assassination."

'My family had to starve because of Nathuram'

On the morning of January 30, 1948, Jaffer Alibhai Kilawala (84), a resident of Byculla, had just inaugurated his small circulating library. The establishment still stands today, as Jaffer Book Stall and Circulating Library. He had around 350 comic books.

In less than two hours from the inauguration, however, he had to shut shop as trouble brewed in the wake of Mahatma's assassination. He kept the shutters down for the days that followed, as tension mounted. Prior to buying the small shop for Rs. 200, Jaffer had been selling comics on the pavement near Byculla station.

Speaking to MiD DAY from his house behind the shop, Jafferbhai said he recalls the incidents vividly: "It was because of Nathuram Godse that my family had to starve for five days. I had just managed to make a few annas of sale, and within hours I had to shut shop."

Father made the sketch of Godse: Cop's daughter

MiD DAY traced the daughter of Balchandra Haldipur, a police inspector in 1948 who was working under Nagarvala in the Special Branch probe team that was given the task of nabbing Godse's co-conspirators. Haldipur was instrumental in catching two of them Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare.

He retired in 1975 as DCP of Greater Bombay. Speaking from her Thane residence, 69-year-old Shakuntala, a retired school principal, reminisced that her father had a razor-sharp memory and sketched portraits of people he met. He had even sketched Godse, when he was being taken from Mumbai to Delhi for the trial by air.

"My father would have raw eggs to save time and work on the leads of the case. The day Apte and Karkare checked into Pyrkes Apollo Hotel near Regal cinema, my father waited for them for seven hours. He had no photographs of them based merely on his suspicion, he called out 'Kai re Apte,' and the man who he suspected to be Apte turned round to answer the call. He was nabbed, along with Karkare," said Raja (76), his
son-in-law.

The trial started on June 22, 1948 and all the accused were taken to a court in Red Fort, specially constituted by an order of the Union Government. Haldipur, being one of the investigators, had to take his family and was given accommodation inside the fort. "I was admitted to school late. I was already seven-years-old when I was sent to school, as I stayed with my parents in Red Fort, during the trial," recalled Shakuntala.

The trial went on for eight months before Justice Atma Charan passed a final order on February 10, 1949. Eight men were convicted for the murder conspiracy, and others convicted for violation of the Explosive Substances Act. Godse and Apte were sentenced to death and the six others were awarded life imprisonment

 

[pisinari]

interesting

[Ladies_Tailor]

Gud guy...

[cherlapalli_jailer]

nice to know

[dkc]

what a brave man.

 

His story should be told as a story of great courage to every Hindu Kid.

[timmy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bb7QsR_Lw1E

[aakathaai]

Godse subhash Chandra Bose shishyudanta nethaji vishyam lo jarigina anyayaniki kopam vachindi

[timmy]

Godse subhash Chandra Bose shishyudanta nethaji vishyam lo jarigina anyayaniki kopam vachindi

See the above video

[dkc]

Godse subhash Chandra Bose shishyudanta nethaji vishyam lo jarigina anyayaniki kopam vachindi

 

ila kooda talk unda..

 

Vaadu antha clear ga cheppadu ga enduku champaado, court lo.

 

Innaallu ban chesaaru aa speech ni.. but mana govt competence edisinattu undi kaabatti, adhi bayata ki vachindi..

 

He killed Gandhi to save the nation from his monkey antics.

[rebeI]

ila kooda talk unda..

 

Vaadu antha clear ga cheppadu ga enduku champaado, court lo.

 

Innaallu ban chesaaru aa speech ni.. but mana govt competence edisinattu undi kaabatti, adhi bayata ki vachindi..

 

He killed Gandhi to save the nation from his monkey antics.

 

gandhi gurinchi neelanti g@ndu gallu kuda vaagutunnaru... thoo deenamma jeevitham..

[dkc]

gandhi gurinchi neelanti g@ndu gallu kuda vaagutunnaru... thoo deenamma jeevitham..

 

sare aithe.. nuvve maatladu chooddaam.

[rebeI]

sare aithe.. nuvve maatladu chooddaam.

 

nenu neelaga antha telisinattu speechlu ivvanu...

 

gandhi rasina oka rendu books chaduvu ayana mentality ento entha great human being oo artham avuthundhi...

 

aa taravata vachi matladu..

[rebeI]

ilanti mahanubhavulu kuda untara anipistundhi ayana gurinchi chadivithe... gandhi ni chetha vedhavala teesi pareyakandi please... 

 

 

[timmy]

M.K. Gandhi was loyal to imperialism. The Western news media and their Indian allies by a massive propaganda exercise created the illusion of sainthood around Gandhi and made people believe that he fought Apartheid in South Africa, and in the process of doing so developed a new method of non-violent struggle called satyagraha. Nothing is farther from the truth. Gandhi, for the major part of his life, worshipped British imperialism and too often proudly proclaimed himself a lover of the Empire. He was Kipling's Gunga Din in flesh and blood.

To understand Gandhi's politics in South Africa, it is essential to note the three fundamental trends which all along persisted underneath all his activities. They were:

(1) his loyalty to the British Empire,
(2) his apathy with regard to the Indian "lower castes", India's indigenous population, and
(3) his virulent anti-African racism.

Gandhi was once thrown out of a train compartment which was reserved exclusively for the Whites. It was not that Gandhi was fighting on behalf of the local Africans that he broke the rule in getting into a Whites' compartment. No! that was not the reason. Gandhi was so furious that he and his merchant caste Indians (Banias) were treated on par with the local Africans. This is the real reason for his fighting race discrimination in South Africa, and he had absolutely no concern about the pitiable way the Africans were treated by the Whites.

On June 2, 1906 he commented in the Indian Opinion that "Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians (meaning upper caste Hindu Indians) or colored people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trains."

During the `Kaffir Wars' in South Africa he was a regular Gunga Din, who volunteered to organize a brigade of Indians to put down the Zulu uprising and was decorated himself for valor under fire.

Gandhi said on September 26, 1896 about the African people: "Ours is one continued struggle sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness."

Again in an editorial on the Natal Municipal Corporation Bill, in the Indian Opinion of March 18, 1905, Gandhi wrote: "Clause 200 makes provision for registration of persons belonging to uncivilized races (meaning the local Africans), resident and employed within the Borough.

One can understand the necessity of registration of Kaffirs who will not work, but why should registration be required for indentured Indians...?" Again on September 9, 1905, Gandhi wrote about the local Africans as: "in the majority of cases it compels the native to work for at least a few days a year" (meaning that the locals are lazy).

Nothing could be farther from the truth that Gandhi fought against Apartheid, which many propagandists in later years wanted people to believe.

He was all in favor of continuation of White domination and the oppression of Blacks in South Africa.

In the Indian Opinion of March 25, 1905, Gandhi wrote on a Bill regulating fire-arms: "In the instance of fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there the slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the British Indians?"
Gandhi always advised Indians not to align with other political groups in either colored or African communities. He was strongly opposed to the commingling of races.

In the Indian Opinion of September 4, 1904, Gandhi wrote: "Under my suggestion, the Town Council (of Johannesburg) must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. It think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen."

In the Indian Opinion of September 24, 1903, Gandhi said: "We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the Whites) do... by advocating the purity of all races."

Again on December 24, 1903, in the Indian Opinion Gandhi stated that: "so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is purity of type."

When he was fighting on behalf of Indians, he was not fighting for all the Indians, but only for his rich merchant class upper caste Hindus!

In the Anglo-Boer War of 1899, Gandhi, in spite of his own belief that truth was on the side of the Boers, formed an ambulance unit in support of the British forces. He was very earnest about taking up arms and laying down his life for his beloved Queen. He led his men on to the battlefield and received a War Medal.

Gandhi joined in the orgy of Zulu slaughter when the Bambata Rebellion broke out. One needs to read the entire history of Bambata Rebellion to place Gandhi's nazi war crimes in its proper perspective.

[dkc]

nenu neelaga antha telisinattu speechlu ivvanu...

 

gandhi rasina oka rendu books chaduvu ayana mentality ento entha great human being oo artham avuthundhi...

 

aa taravata vachi matladu..

 

neekem telika pothe, naaku anni telisanattu isthunna ani ela cheppagalavu..

 

bp penchukokunda, easy theesko..