Forensics, Experts and Conspiracy Trials: The Mendacious Native and the Rule of Law

Abstract

Aparna Vaidik examines the history of the revolutionary conspiracy case trial – the Lahore Conspiracy Case (1929-1931). Set in British India the trial lit up the nationalist night sky for three years and continued to reverberate in the public memory thereafter. On trial were a group of young men—self-proclaimed revolutionaries— who belonged to a newly-formed revolutionary outfit called the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) established on 19 September 1928 with nodal points in Punjab and the United Provinces. The Trial was named after the city of Lahore where it was booked and held. It began on 23 July 1929 in the city’s Central Jail and became one of the most infamous trials of the times. On 7 October 1930, the judge pronounced the young men guilty of conspiring and waging a war against the British crown. Three of them—Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru—whom the Indian public believed to be innocent at the time were sentenced to be hanged and others received varying jail sentences. This paper examines the police’s and the judicial use of criminological forensics during the trial. Forensic examination of chemicals, bombs, guns, pistols along with finger nails, hair, clothing was crucial in piecing together the case against the revolutionaries. During the trials several different kinds of ‘experts’ – arms, fingerprinting, handwriting, chemical, and bomb experts were invited to testify. By the late 1920s positions of different kinds of experts had been institutionalized in India with handwriting, ammunition, and chemical experts, amongst others, being in regular pay of the state. However, this did not mean that the terms experts, expertise, science, and evidence had acquired a stable meaning (and the debate continues till date). The paper examines the ‘experts’ report and testimonies [Dr. Robson (Bomb Expert), T.Tyson (Government Press), Robert Churchill (Firearms), Captain F.W. Holmes (Civil Surgeon), Lieut-Col. J.G. Swan (Civil Surgeon), Dr. A.E. Mathews (Civil Surgeon) and R.Stott (Examiner of Questioned Documents)] – and the purportedly ‘scientific evidence’ that they presented – to show how they were used to establish judicial truth and sustain the ideological myth of rule of law; and establish the notion of the ‘mendacious native’ whose testimony was unreliable.