Supreme court to hear plea seeking review of Mahatma Gandhi assassination probe

A bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao initially asked Phadnis why the matter, affirmed by the trial court and high court verdicts, should be raked up now.

The Supreme Court took up for hearing a plea seeking reinvestigation into the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, after a petitioner sought a “new commission of inquiry to investigate the larger conspiracy behind the murder”. The petitioner, Pankaj Kumudchandra Phadnis, is a Mumbai-based consultant in IT-enabled education. A bench of Justices S A Bobde and L Nageswara Rao initially asked Phadnis why the matter, affirmed by the trial court and high court verdicts, should be raked up now. However, it subsequently appointed senior counsel Amrender Sharan to assist the court in deciding whether it should proceed with the petition.

“We find it difficult to say to him that nothing can be done on this,” the bench told Sharan: “We are not binding you to anything.” Phadnis’s plea questioned the three-bullet theory relied upon in the trial to convict accused Nathuram Vinayak Godse and Narayan Apte, who were hanged. He claimed there could be a third assassin and said there was a need to investigate if the Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence agency of the US during World War II and a predecessor of the CIA, had tried to protect Gandhi.

Phadnis sought time to file additional documents to buttress his plea. These documents were in the National Archives and Research Administration, Maryland, US, and were yet to be decided for declassifying, he said. Phadnis said his appeal was pending before US authorities. But the bench asked: “What can we do now at this stage about a case which has been affirmed up to the apex court?” The petitioner pointed out that the case was never considered by the apex court.

Appeals filed by the convicts were dismissed by the East Punjab High Court in 1949 following which the Privy Council had sent the matter back, saying the Supreme Court of India, which was due to come into existence, will take it up. “But the Supreme Court never got the opportunity to adjudicate on the matter as they were executed before the SC was set up,” he said.

He questioned the contents of the report of the Justice J L Kapur commission of inquiry, which was set up in 1966, on the issue. The court seemed in no mood to relent and said several decades had passed since the assassination. But Phadnis said new facts had emerged. “Are you suggesting that a third person is involved?” asked Justice Bobde. “There is a possibility,” Phadnis replied. “We want to go by the law and not by political passion…. You say that there was someone else, a third person who killed him (Gandhi). Is that person alive today to face the trial?” Justice Bobde asked. “It may be an organisation,” the petitioner said.

Asked which was the organisation, Phadnis said it was a “successor of Force 136 ( a secret British special intelligence unit)”. “We cannot convict an organisation. Do you know whether that person is alive?” the bench asked. Phadnis said he did not know if that person is alive but a probe should be ordered. The petitioner also referred to a telegram sent from the US embassy on January 30, 1948, and said that Herbert Tom Reiner, disbursing officer, was within five feet of Gandhi when he was shot, and with the aid of Indian guards, he had apprehended the assassin.

“Reiner returned to the embassy in the night and gave a debriefing account,” he said. The bench said: “Is Reiner alive today?” “No, but his debriefign account survives,” said Phadnis. On the appointment of amicus curie in the case, Congress leader Kapil Sibal said: “I am very happy. I am very happy because you know something more will come out hopefully. Because many people have been in denial.”