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At lunchtime on 27 April 1959, the handsome naval commander Kawas Nanavati was told by his English wife Sylvia that she was having an affair with their flamboyant businessman-playboy friend, Prem Ahuja. Later that evening, armed with a revolver, Nanavati stormed Ahuja`s bedroom and shut the door behind him. Three gunshots were heard going off inside. Ahuja was dead. Ahuja`s murder set in motion an extraordinary public frenzy – thousands descended on the streets of Bombay chanting in favour of the hero Nanavati, and the jury, swept off their feet by the dazzling naval officer in the dock, returned a ‘Not Guilty` verdict. This trial was the death knell of the jury system in India. It hurtled a judiciary keen on preserving justice into confrontation with an executive bending to the will of hysterical crowds and tabloids and Nanavati`s powerful friends in the establishment. In this laboriously researched book – part thriller, part courtroom drama and legal history, and part social portrait of post- Independence Bombay – Bachi Karkaria gives a most comprehensive account of the Nanavati case and the Constitutional crisis to which it gave birth.
ISBN - 9789386228277
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Pages : 304
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