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the other. This was Ekbal Ali. Once about a dozen people stood charged with murder before a Judge of the same District. The Judge sentenced one of them to ten years' rigorous impri- sonment on the strength of the evidence of two men who could depose to nothing beyond seeing him inside the house where murder had been committed at the time of murder. And this was Ali Raza Khan. You can well understand now, Mr. Editor, what a mockery justice often becomes, administered as it is by such men.
You will remember that in two of my letters I spoke of how the Nawab Mushtak Husain, Vicar-ul-Mulk, the Revenue Secre- tary, had ignored the most notorious facts furnished him re- garding the administration of the Parbhani District. Now I learn from the columns of the Government organ-the "Deccan Standard"-that the First Taluqdhar of the Parbhani District the official responsible for the administration of it, has been suspended "recently" on account of charges of corruption brought against him. It would be interesting to know to what recent date the word recently refers. Besides this, there are some questions which need to be answered and could be answer- ed only by those behind the scenes. The first official report of the Taluqdhar's crooked ways reached the Revenue Secretary, I am informed, about four years ago. What has the Revenue Secretary been doing these four years? Has it taken him four years to find out the desirability of suspending the offending official? Or has he been mum until he could no longer be so? Why did the Nawab Mushtak Husain oppose the appointment of the man, now under suspension, to the first Talukdharship of Nalgonda in the Eastern division while Subhadar thereof? And was it not through the Nawab's instrumentality that he received an order of transfer to Parbhani, an out-of-the-way place, even before he could join his appointment at Nalgonda? Will any one come forward to answer these questions?
