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NEMESIS AT HAND
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But Nemesis was already dogging the Bráhman's steps. On the 6th May, Nanda-Kumár was charged before Lemaistre, as the sitting magistrate of Calcutta, with obtaining a large sum of money from a dead man's estate by means of a forged bond. The accuser was an attorney named Mohan Prasád. Lemaistre and Hyde went through the case together. After an enquiry which lasted all day, they committed the accused to jail for trial on a felonious charge.

The blow which fell so suddenly on the old arch-plotter had in fact been hanging over him for more than a year past. It has been clearly shown by Sir James Stephen that ever since March, 1774, Mohan Prasád had been trying to get hold of certain documents essential for the opening of his case. These documents were then lodged in the Mayor's Court, to which he applied in vain for their surrender. When the new Supreme Court was set up in the room of the older tribunal, Mohan Prasád renewed his applications with better success, and about the end of April, 1775, the needful documents passed into the hands of Nanda-Kumár's old enemy, who lost no time in turning them to account[1].

During the month that elapsed between the arrest and the trial of Nanda-Kumár, his patrons in the Council pursued their old tactics with relentless zeal. Because the Manni Begam disowned her letter to Nanda-Kumár, they found a pretext for turning her

  1. Sir J. Stephen's Nuncomar and Impey.