Those were the days: When a British judge in Madras was in the dock

The Royal Indian Navy had mutinied in Bombay (February 1946) and a wave of repression was let loose by the British. As many as 228 people had been killed in Bombay and the nation erupted in protests. Madras woke up to a complete hartal. In Mambalam Railway Gate the Indo-Ceylon express was stopped and an attempt was made to set it on fire.

The Madras streets were bereft of traffic as protestors took it upon themselves to stop any sort of activity. Armed with sacks of stones, lads had stationed themselves at strategic points like the Traffic Island near Esplanade to pelt the cars. That was when a green Chevrolet car came speeding into view near the Fort Station. The boys turned their attention towards it because from afar they could see it was being driven by a European.

While the driver steered the car with his left hand, he used his right hand to fire a revolver four times. It was unexpected and the crowd ran in panic. Three boys were attacked — two were injured and one was gravely wounded. According to a witness, the wounded boy shouted aiyo aiyo and fell down bleeding profusely. An ambulance took the boy and two others injured to the nearby general hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The newspapers mentioned that the occupant of the car believed to be a European was the assailant at large. The City Council gathered under the Deputy Mayor and condemned the awful shooting incident by a civilian resulting in the death of one person.

It came as a shock to many to know that the unknown shooter was actually a British judge of the Madras High court. The headlines read — Monday’s firing near Fort Station — Justice Byers did it.’

Justice Byers handed over the gun to police custody. An inquest was held with the panchayatdars including both Europeans and Indians in which Byers gave a statement under oath.

According to his confession, Mr JA Byers ICS had finished his work in Madras High Court on February 25 at 4.30 pm and had exited the court campus through the judge’s gate driving his own vehicle. With him was another judge Kunhiraman. Near the Esplanade roundabout, a crowd and a volley of stones greeted him. He turned left into Muthuswamy Road in which crowds of strikers had positioned themselves strategically on Traffic Islands.

Byers fired three rounds from a 360 bore pistol. Not waiting to see what the result his bullets caused other than the scattering of the crowd, Justice Byers speeded up the bridge and disappeared into relative safety.

At the end of the inquest, a group of students gathered outside waving tricolours and holding rose garlands. They asked for the body so that the unknown boy could be cremated with full honours. But the police refused and secretly gave the corpse to a charitable organisation, Hindu Seva Sangh, which cremated it in Washermanpet.

With so much publicity, the British just could not brush the case under the carpet. For those few months, Byers social reputation swayed to and fro; as he stood in the dock of the court he had once presided over.  A hearing was instituted to determine whether Byer’s needed to stand trial before the court for culpable homicide. The legal fraternity pondered on how to try one of their own and Vl Ethiraj, fresh from his victory in the MKT case, appeared for the defence of Byers. 35 witnesses were examined. The arguments from the start were concerned only if the crowd was violent or not.

The doctor who conducted the post-mortem on the unfortunate and unknown boy had found a bullet in the body that had caused haemorrhage to vital organs. Ethiraj asked the doctor to sketch on a paper the flight of the bullet and argued that the angle of firing did not coincide with the injury.

Byers stuck to his statement till the final minutes of the trial. He just supplemented it by justifying his actions on the ground that he apprehended danger to his life and acted in private self-defence. A great strength was the concurring statement of an Indian co-passenger in the car and Indian judge Kunhiraman.

After a three day trial, SM Hasan, Chief Presidency Magistrate, discharged Justice Byers; charged under section 304 IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). He said, “After taking all the facts into consideration there is no case for you to take a trial at the sessions. Therefore, you are discharged and your pistol will be returned.”