Page:A General Biography of Bengal Celebrities Vol 1.djvu/37

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28 LIFE OF 1TB. MANOMOHUN GHOSE. Mukherjee and Babu Sree Gopal Chaterjee of the Krishnaghur bar, to defend these poor meri in the lower Courts, without any fees, and so they did. But these poor men were convicted and sentenced to two months' rigorous imprisonment The local pleaders and the entire native population of the district, disapproved of this unjust action of the local executive, and advised the biographer to secure the services of a Barrister-at- Law to move the High Court in the matter. He then asked Kristo Das Pal's opinion, and it was he who suggested that Mr. Ghose should be induced to take up the case. The biographer was not then personally known to Mr. Ghose ; and so one day, he went to see him as a stranger, Mr. Ghose who had acquainted himself with the facts of this ugly case from newspaper reports, carefully read its records, saw that the whole proceedings were illegal and unjust and agreed to take up the case. He preferred an ap- peal to Mr. Lawford,then Sessions Judge of Nuddea, and the Magistrate of the district of Nuddea, when called upon to support the conviction, intimated through . the Government pleader that he had nothing to say in support of it ! The poor men were released from jail, and blessed Mr. Ghose. The case created a considerable sensation at the time, and not only the educated public of the district of Nuddea naturally felt an interest in it, but the outside public closely watched its proceedings as reported in the States- man, the Indian Mirror, and the Hindoo Patriot, at the time. An unknown Calcutta gentleman, we believe, was so deeply impressed by the noble example of self-sacrifice and patrotism shewn by Mr. Mano- mohun Ghose, in this celebrated criminal case, on be- half of a set of ignorant, poor rustics of his own district, that he requested the late Hon'ble Kristo Das Pal to send three Volumes of the " Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini " as a present .not only to Mr, Ghose, but also to Babu Okhoy Kumar Mu-