CHAPTER VII

MR. HARTLEY KENNEDY, C.S.I.

1899-1901

When Mr. Vincent left India at the end of 1898, to spend the remainder of his days in Switzerland, he was succeeded by Mr. Hartley Kennedy of the Bombay District Police. Mr. Kennedy took charge of the Commissioner’s office on January 9th, 1899. Like his predecessor, he had to reckon with the continued presence of plague, and also with the effect upon the urban police administration of severe famine in various districts of the Presidency. These natural disasters synchronized with a severe slump in the Bombay textile industry, due chiefly to over-production and the consequent glutting of the China market, which at that date absorbed the bulk of the Bombay mill-products. According to a leading mill-owner, the industry in 1899 was in a most critical position; nearly all the mills were closed on three days in the week, and some had altogether ceased working. A strike of mill-hands was threatened, which the Police were called upon, and managed, to settle before it came to a head. The position of affairs in 1901 was very little better.

The police were thus faced with an abnormal volume of crime resulting from disease, starvation and unemployment. In 1899 two real dacoities of the type common in up-country districts, perpetrated probably by Pardesis from Northern India, occurred in the suburbs and obliged the Commissioner to establish night-patrols of mounted and foot police in the north of the Island. The following year witnessed a marked increase of crime against property, resulting from high prices and unemployment. Famine-conditions were responsible for an abnormal number of cases of exposure of infants in 1899 and for many instances of robbery by means of _dhatura_ poisoning in 1900. But, apart from these temporary symptoms of economic disorder, the last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a steady increase of cases of all kinds under the Indian Penal Code and miscellaneous laws. Cases under the Police Act would probably have shown a similar upward tendency, but for the fact that prosecutions were purposely avoided, in deference to the reluctance of the Presidency Magistrates to convict offenders on the sole evidence of police witnesses. It has always been difficult to find private persons willing to appear in court and give evidence in such matters.

As in most parts of India, the number of false complaints brought to the police was considerable, many of these cases falling within the category of “maliciously false”. The Commissioner estimated the proportion of false to true cases in 1900 at one in 375. The false complaint, supported by false evidence, has been a feature of the criminal administration of India from early days and adequately explains the reason why Europeans have always clung so strenuously to the right, secured to them by the criminal law, of being tried by a jury containing a majority of their own countrymen. It is the only safeguard they possess against false prosecution and illegal conviction. Some such protection for the European minority is essential in a country, where the administration of justice by Indian courts has not reached so high and detached a level as it has in England.

The year 1901 was prolific of murders, twenty-one cases being investigated by the police. Among the chief _causes célèbres_ was the murder in the streets by followers of H. H. the Aga Khan of certain Khojas belonging to the Asna Ashariya section, which had announced its determination to secede from the main body of Khojas. The precise reason for the murders is unknown. They may have been decided upon by one of the factions as a protest against the constant absences of H. H. the Aga Khan, or on the other hand may have been intended by the party which supported His Highness as a celebration of his safe return from abroad. Faction feeling in the community was at the time running high, and the more fanatical of the Aga Khan’s followers were incensed with those Khojas who were disinclined to subscribe blindly to the opinions on communal matters held by the more conservative section. His Highness himself, who happened to be in Europe on one of his periodical visits, had no knowledge whatever of the murder-plot; otherwise his influence would certainly have been directed towards restraining the fury of his Ismailia followers. He himself was much perturbed by the tragedy and gave Mr. Kennedy every assistance in the enquiry which followed. The three victims were stabbed to death in the streets, almost at the moment of his arrival, and the police found their time fully occupied in trying to calm the passions thus aroused. The murders produced such rancour between the Ismailia and the Asna Ashariya Khojas that, for many years afterwards, the police were obliged to prohibit the funerals of the latter passing through the recognized Khoja quarters to their separate grave-yard in Mazagon. It was not until 1913 that the Commissioner found himself justified in relaxing the more stringent precautions, owing to the passage of time and the prevalence of a better feeling between the two sections of Khojas. The knives, with which the murders were committed, were preserved for many years in one of the lockers in the inner room of the Commissioner’s office, and were handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department as an exhibit for the museum, when that branch was reorganized in 1910.

Most of the crime in respect of property was, as usual, committed by Mhar and Mang robbers from the Deccan, by the Wagris or gipsy tribes, by professional thieves and beggars from Kathiawar, and by north-country Hindus and Pathans. Bombay has a large floating population of these wanderers, who visit the city for criminal purposes, and, having attained their object, travel to other parts of India, where all trace of them is frequently lost. Among cases of special importance were the prosecutions of two licensed dealers in arms and ammunition in 1899, a “golden gang” or swindling case in which a respectable Indian firm was cheated of Rs. 63,000, and which was successfully investigated by Inspector (afterwards Superintendent) Sloane, and the conviction for sedition of the editor of a vernacular newspaper, the _Gurakhi_, which, as an organ of the revolutionary party in Western India, had indulged in violent anti-British propaganda. The effect of plague and famine conditions upon the activities of the police was apparent in the returns of recovery of stolen property; and their normal duty of watch and ward suffered also to some extent from the imposition of such emergent tasks as the registration, accommodation, feeding and repatriation of a large number of war-refugees who arrived from the Transvaal in 1899. The restrictions upon the Haj traffic continued; but this did not absolve the police from the task of “shepherding” large numbers of returning pilgrims—the backwash of former pilgrimages—or of repatriating hundreds of poor and illiterate Moslems, who, knowing nothing of the stoppage of the traffic, arrived every year in Bombay in the hope of being allowed to embark for Jeddah.

The total strength of the police-force remained unaltered during Mr. Kennedy’s term of office. Including the constables attached to the Veterinary Department, the force numbered 2118. The annual cost, however, had increased in 1900 to Rs. 792,959, in consequence of extra allowances and contingencies. These charges were met partly from imperial, partly from provincial, and partly from municipal and other revenues. The municipal contribution was recovered under section 62 of Bombay Act III of 1888, and continued to be so till 1907, when under the provisions of Bombay Act III of that year the Government became responsible for the whole cost of the force. Besides the police-force proper, the Commissioner recruited and controlled a force of 1048 Ramoshis or night-watchmen, whose wages, as previously mentioned, were recovered from the individuals and firms employing their services. The Ramoshis as a class were not very satisfactory; and though nominally under the supervision of the police-officers of the division or section in which their post lay, there was really no one to see whether they kept awake at night and really did their duty. Had there been any proper and comprehensive beat-system for the divisional constabulary, such as there is in London, the existence of a Ramoshi force would have been quite unnecessary: but the total number of police-constables was never sufficient to admit of the introduction of such a system.

For administrative purposes, Bombay was composed in 1899 of the eleven police divisions mentioned below, which were sub-divided into sections or areas controlled by a “police-station”. The staff of a station comprised usually an European inspector and sub-inspector and a number of subordinate native officers (jemadar, havildar, naik) and constables.

+----------+-----------------------------------------------+ | Division | Sections | +----------+-----------------------------------------------+ | A | Fort | | B | Umarkhadi, Market, Mandvi | | C | Bhuleshwar, Nal Bazar, Dhobi Talao | | D | Girgaum, Khetwadi, Mahalakshmi and Walkeshwar | | E | Byculla, Mazagon, Kamathipura | | F | Dadar, Sewri, Matunga, Parel | | G | Worli, Mahim | | H and I | Harbour and Docks | | K | Detective Branch | | L | Reserve (Armed and unarmed) | +----------+-----------------------------------------------+

Housing-accommodation was provided for only about one-tenth of the force. The Head Police Office at Crawford Market, which Colonel Wilson had so often asked for, was completed and occupied in 1899, and lines for 120 men had been built on the western boundary of the parade-ground adjacent to the Gokuldas Tejpal hospital. Stabling for twenty horses of the mounted police was also built, the main body of the mounted police being accommodated in the old Government House Bodyguard lines at Byculla. With the exception of the 200 men or so, who occupied the old police-lines in Byculla and the newly-erected quarters in the compound of the Head Police Office, the whole force was living in hired rooms of an undesirable and insanitary type in various parts of the city. The monthly house-allowance paid to constables barely sufficed to pay the rents of their squalid rooms, while in the case of the European officers it was quite insufficient to secure proper accommodation. The difficulty was acute in the A. division (Fort and Colaba), where suitable residential accommodation was extremely limited and fetched a high rent. To anyone, like the author of this book, who has seen the very unsuitable quarters in which most of the European and Indian police were obliged to reside at the beginning of the present century, it will always be a matter of surprise that the force accomplished as much as it did and that the death-roll among both Europeans and Indians was not far heavier. Even the comparatively modern buildings at Bazar Gate and Paidhoni left much to be desired in the way of reasonable space and ordinary comfort. The occupants of the Paidhoni station, which mounts guard over a crowded lower-class neighbourhood, possessed the additional disadvantage of an atmosphere heavy with the smells and miasmata of an Eastern city. It says much for the _dura ilia_ of the British soldiers recruited for the Bombay police force that so many of them were able to live and carry on their work in these conditions without a permanent loss of health.

The reiterated complaints of successive Commissioners had impressed upon the Bombay Government the need for the proper housing of the force. But their wishes were dependent upon the state of the provincial exchequer, which after several years of plague and a series of disastrous famines was quite unable to provide money for police-accommodation schemes. A solution of the difficulty was, however, secured by the passing of Act IV of 1898 (City Improvement Trust Act), under the provisions of which the newly-constituted Trust could be called upon by the Government to build quarters and barracks for the police in various parts of the Island. By 1901 the Government had already formulated their first demands, and the engineers of the Trust were preparing plans and schemes for police stations, quarters and lines, in Colaba, Princess Street (a new street-scheme of the Trust), Nagpada and Agripada and in other crowded localities. These buildings took many years to complete, and some of them in the northern suburbs had not been commenced in 1916. But the first step towards a comprehensive solution of the grave problem of police-accommodation was taken during Mr. Kennedy’s _régime_, when the City Improvement Trust assumed the task which the Government with the best will in the world, found themselves quite unable to fulfil.

Though his period of office was not long, Mr. Kennedy left his mark upon the police administration, and there are persons still alive who remember the energy and activity with which he tackled some of the evils of urban life. He was a sworn foe of gambling in any form, and had barely gripped the reins of office ere he commenced an offensive against the bagatelle-players, the cardsharpers and the dice-gamblers of the lower quarters. The divisional police learned to their cost that it did not pay to wink at gaming, and that the Commissioner, working through private agents of his own, possessed an uncomfortably accurate knowledge of what was going on in various quarters of the city. The performances of one of his chief informers are still within the recollection of the oldest members of the force and of some of the superannuated gamblers of the old B. and C. divisions. The immediate result of Mr. Kennedy’s action was a large increase of cases under the Gambling Act, sixty prosecutions being launched in the year 1900 alone. The effect of these prosecutions, however, was minimised by the Magistrates’ practice of imposing merely a fine on conviction. Such fines acted as very little deterrent to men who dealt week by week with comparatively large sums of money. In the case of the most inveterate gamblers a short term of imprisonment would probably have had a more salutary effect.

Another problem, which occupied Mr. Kennedy’s attention, was that of the beggars who infest Bombay. They comprised not only the thousands of able-bodied religious mendicants, who form an integral feature of Hinduism and are largely protected from official action by the religious atmosphere surrounding them, but also the still larger class of professional beggars of every sect, who descend on the city like locusts from the rural districts and do not hesitate, as opportunity occurs, to commit crime. In 1899 Mr. Kennedy raised the question of the best method of dealing with the latter class, and pointed out that daily prosecution, followed by the imposition of a small fine, failed entirely to effect any amelioration of the evil. He therefore decided on more drastic measures. In 1900 he deported 9,000 beggars to the territories of Indian Princes and 10,000 to various districts in British India. This wholesale expulsion caused a temporary improvement in the condition of the streets. But such deportations, to be really effective, must be carried on ruthlessly year by year; and methods would have to be adopted to penalise beggars of an undesirable type, who dared to return after deportation. Mr. Kennedy’s action was not pursued by his successors, and the beggar-nuisance consequently continued unabated. In 1920 it had become so intolerable that a special committee of Government and Municipal representatives was appointed to study the problem in all its bearings and devise measures for its solution.

In the matter of the immoral traffic in women Mr. Kennedy displayed equal activity and achieved more success. The foreign pimp and procurer, who swooped down at intervals upon Bombay to acquaint himself with the demand for fresh women and to relieve the European prostitutes of their earnings, met with no mercy at his hands. He used the provisions of the Aliens Act freely against them, deporting 30 of them in 1900 and 37 in 1901. Officers of the detective branch were entrusted specially with the duty of watching the European brothels, meeting the steamers of foreign shipping-companies, and marking down every Jewish trafficker who showed his nose in Bombay. It is only quite recently that the Indian Government, in response to domestic and international opinion, have strengthened the provisions of the Foreigners Act, in order to give the police in Bombay and other large maritime cities more effective control over these disreputable and degraded persons: and as a result of the pressure of public opinion, endorsed by the League of Nations, the activities of the international trafficker are more restricted and more easily controlled than they were at the close of the nineteenth century. It is much to Mr. Kennedy’s credit that, working with the unamended Act, he was able in two years to secure a definite reduction in the number of professional traffickers visiting Bombay.

He paid constant attention also to the offence of kidnapping or procuring minor Indian girls for immoral purposes. It is well known that both Hindu and Muhammadan recruits for the prostitutes’ profession are obtained from among the illegitimate children of courtesans, or from among female children adopted by prostitutes, or thirdly, by purchase from agents who travel throughout Gujarat, Central India, Rajputana and other districts, picking up superfluous and unwanted girls of tender age for a small sum, sometimes as little as Rs. 5 or Rs. 6, and then selling them at a profit to brothel-keepers in the large cities and towns. Leaving out of consideration the custom, prevalent among Maratha Kunbis and Mhars, of dedicating their female children to the god Khandoba, which in practice condemns the girls to a life of prostitution, and the customs of degraded nomadic tribes like the Kolhatis, Dombars, Harnis, Berads and Mang Garudas, who habitually prostitute their girls, it may be said that among the lower social strata in India female life is held very cheap. A daughter is apt to be regarded rather as a domestic calamity, owing largely to the heavy expense usually involved in getting her married. Cases therefore often occur of young girls being abandoned by their relatives, who are unable to provide the funds required for their regular betrothal; and these little derelicts sometimes drift into brothels, where they are fed, clothed and taught singing and dancing until they reach puberty, when the brothel-keeper arranges to sell their first favours for a round sum to some well-to-do libertine. Muhammadan prostitutes, who are numerous throughout India and range from the inmate of the low-class brothel to the wealthy courtesan, who earns a high fee for her singing, occupies well-furnished quarters, and drives in her own motor-car or carriage, are recruited in the same way. In one case, which occurred a few years ago, a lower class Moplah of the Malabar coast, having borrowed money at a high rate of interest to provide dowries for his two elder daughters and being unable to raise any further sum for his third daughter’s betrothal, sold her outright to a Bombay brothel-keeper for Rs. 40. The girl was about eight years of age when she entered the brothel, and by the age of thirteen she was helping to support her worthless father and two young brothers out of her earnings as a prostitute.

Mr. Kennedy also pointed out to Government that year by year “scores of young girls,” belonging chiefly to Gujarat and Kathiawar, were either picked off the streets by native pimps of both sexes or were, as mentioned above, brought down from rural areas by regular traffickers and sold to the local brothel-keepers for sums ranging from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50. In many cases the police rescued these waifs and restored them to their homes: but they could not make much headway against a system which had attained such large proportions. Moreover, in addition to the difficulty of tracing the girls’ relatives in a country like India, their task was not rendered easier by the absence of any strong public opinion against such practices, and by the non-existence of properly organized orphanages and homes. In several instances girls were discovered prostituting themselves under compulsion from a male “bully” or female brothel-keeper; and in such cases, as well as in cases of kidnapping, every effort was made by the police, under Mr. Kennedy’s orders, to arrest the offenders and bring them to trial. Wherever it was impossible to secure the conviction of an offender under the Indian Penal Code, Mr. Kennedy had resort to the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Criminal Procedure Code. Here he met with more success than his predecessor, who, as already mentioned, complained that the Magistrates required evidence under that chapter which it was extremely difficult to procure. Mr. Kennedy found in