THE TRIAL OF MAHARAJA NAN I) A KUMAR. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. I INTEND to discuss in this essay the famous trial for forgery which was held at Calcutta, iu June 1775, before the Supreme Court of Judicature. In doing so, it will be my duty to com- ment severely on the conduct of Warren Hastings and of Sir Elijah Impey, and I believe I shall be able to prove that the execution of Nanda Kumar* was a judicial murder. I shall endeavour to establish the following nine points : 1. That the bond-exhibit Af of the trial was not a forgery, but was the genuine deed of Bolaqi Das Seth. 2. That no attempt was made to prosecute Nanda Kumar before May 1775. 3. That there is strong circumstantial evidence that Hast- ings was the real prosecutor. 4 That Kamaladdin Khan, the principal witness in the three trials for conspiracy and forgery, was closely connected iu business with Kanta Babu,| the banyan of Hastings, and was the intimate friend of Sadarad- din Munshi, who was formerly in the service of
- i.e.. the sou of Nanda a name of Krishna. I have separated the two
words which make up the name in order to show distinctly that the penul- timate syllable is loug. In Bengali the name is written as one word, Nand(a)kiiiuar. f It was marked Exhibit A at the trial. It may also be called the jewels-bond. (Howell's State Trials, XX, 958.) Iu future references to Howell, I shall quote only the number of the column. J The Arabic word farzi fictitious is the proper term to denote the relation of Kainaladdin to Kanta Babu. JBendmidar is, I think, a solecism, though it is often used. B., T. N. K. 1
