My friend, the assistant magistrate, had still a fortnight of unexpired leave, and proposed to me that we should pay a visit to a friend of his at an out-of-the-way station, called Bijnore. I had not the least objection, and thither we went. We were most hospitably received, partly out of regard for ourselves in particular, but chiefly because our host had not seen a white face for five weeks.
The cutcherry, or court-house, was undergoing repair, and the magistrate, therefore, was obliged to administer the duties of his office in his own abode, or rather in the verandah; for a large number of half-clad natives in a hot country do not impart to a confined space an agreeable perfume by any means. To me this scene--the native court--was particularly interesting. There sat the covenanted official in an arm-chair, with his solah hat on and a cheroot in his mouth, listening very attentively to the sheristadar, or head clerk, who was reading or singing aloud the entire proceedings in the case then pending.
The prisoner, surrounded by half-a-dozen native policemen, all with drawn swords, was standing ten paces off. Ever and anon he interrupted the court by protesting his innocence, and assuring the Sahib that the whole of the depositions were false from beginning to end. This interruption was usually--I may say invariably--rebuked by the words, "Choop raho, suer!" ("Hold your tongue, you pig!") And, not unfrequently the nearest policeman accompanied this mandate by giving the culprit a smart blow on the back or a "dig in the ribs." I have seen prisoners well thrashed in our Indian courts of justice by order of the presiding magistrate for talking out of their turn; but that was not the case in the present instance. No more violence was resorted to than was absolutely necessary for the maintenance of order and the progress of the trial. The offence of which the prisoner stood charged was that of forging a bond for five hundred rupees, and suing thereon for principal and interest. The defence was, that the signature to the bond was not a forgery, and that the money had been advanced to the prosecutor; to prove which, no fewer than seven witnesses were called. Each of them swore, point blank, that, upon a certain day and at a certain place, they saw the prisoner pay over the money, and saw the prosecutor execute the deed. To rebut this, the prosecutor called eleven witnesses who swore, point blank, that, upon the day and at the hour mentioned as the day and hour on which the deed was executed, they met the prosecutor at a village forty miles distant from Bijnore. In short, if their testimony was to be relied upon, the eleven witnesses had proved an alibi.