Madras Players perform play on the most famous and one of the last jury trials at the Madras High Court

On November 8, 1944, a quiet Wednesday morning in Chennai, then called Madras, a group of unknown assailants attacked a Tamil film journalist. They upturned the hand-pulled rickshaw that he had been traveling in, scared the rickshaw puller away, and stabbed the journalist, CN Laxmikanthan, in the abdomen and fled. .Lakshmikanthan managed to drag himself to his lawyer's office, and then to the police station, before he was taken to the General Hospital, where he died a day later. To his lawyer, and to the police, all that a bleeding, stammering Laxmikanthan could manage to say was, "They stabbed me.".They stabbed me.The case went on to became one of the most sensational and high profile ones in the history of Madras. It was also one of the last cases to have been tried under the jury system. It was presided over by an English judge, Justice Vere Mockett at the Madras High Court, which was under the Madras Presidency at the time. Back then, the Madras High Court used to have original criminal jurisdiction, which it later gave up, and the jurisdiction now rests with the magistrate's court..Reeking of sleaze and scandal, Lakshmikanthan's killing captured the imagination of all citizens. Lakshmikanthan, who ran a notorious tabloid called Hindu Nesan, operated on a standard principle- he would dissect the personal lives of Tamil film superstars, sniff out scandals, sometimes even invent them. He would warn his subjects in advance and hold back on publishing the stories if the stars paid him extravagant sums of money. In the process, he obviously ruffled many feathers and made countless enemies. .Days after Lakshmikanthan's killing, the police arrested eight persons, including the reigning superstar of that era, MK Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, and popular comic actor, known as the "Chaplin of India," NS Krishnan. A fortnight before he was killed, Lakshmikanthan had published a bunch of stories suggesting the salacious ways of Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, and insinuating that Krishnan's wife was a prostitute. .A jury of nine eminent persons, all Indians, was constituted and the trial went on for 18 days. Witnesses turned hostile, the accused went back on their statements made before the magistrate, and alleged that they had made such statements under coercion. Eventually, the jury held all accused, except a cinema producer, guilty on all counts. It sentenced the accused, including the two cine stars, to life imprisonment.While the others did not have the means to challenge the jury's decision, Bhagavathar and Krishnan filed an appeal, but their conviction and sentence were upheld. They then approached the Privy Council in London, which remanded the case to the High Court for a fresh appellate hearing. At the end of it, in 1947, the two were acquitted of all charges and walked out of prison, where they had already spent 27 months in incarceration. .The acquittal, however, resulted in further debates on who were the real killers. The mystery remains unresolved till date. .On November 26 this year, The Madras Players, the oldest English theatre group in Chennai, brought to life the grand trial on stage. Incidentally, Senior Advocate NL Rajah played the part of the defence counsel KM Munshi, the famed lawyer from Bombay who ultimately gave up his practice to join the Indian freedom struggle..The roles of three other central characters in the play - Inspector Krishnan Nambiar, the investigating officer in the Lakshmikanthan case, and the two doctors PR Balakrishnan and P Srinivasulu Reddy - were also played by practicing members of the Bar. These roles were performed by Advocates CK Chandrasekkar, P Srinivas and K Senthil Kumar, respectively. The role of Munshi's junior associate in the play was also played by a member of the Bar, R Mitesh.In the first row of the packed Narada Gana Sabha auditorium in Chennai, sat the who's who of the cine world and the judiciary, including film director Mani Rathnam, and serving Madras High Court Judges, Justices Anita Sumanth, Anand Venkatesh, and AD Jagdish Chandira..The set was an impeccable replica of the historic Madras High Court rooms, with carved rosewood chairs and picture cut-outs of its resplendent stained glass panels.Written and directed by theatre veteran PC Ramakrishna, the play's script was based "faithfully on the actual trial transcripts of the case.""When PC Ramakrishna told me he wished to dramatise some court cases, I told him about the Lakshmikanthan case and the Alavandar murder case from the 1950s in which the body of an ex-serviceman was found. He (Ramakrishna) was totally captivated by Lakshmikanthan's story. So, he wrote the script and brought it to me," Rajah said. "Everyone in Madras even now knows about the case. They know that something terrible happened to Bhagavathar and Krishnan, but many do not know what actually happened to them, so we chose the story for our play," he added. .They know that something terrible happened to Bhagavathar and KrishnanNL Rajah.The senior counsel said that they decided to stick to the original case paper for the script and all dialogues were presented as they happened during the actual trial. "There is very little embellishment. While court proceedings are highly dramatised in cinema, we wanted to stay as true to reality as possible," he said..Dabbling in theatre is not new for Rajah. Ten years ago, he played the role of the public prosecutor in a play based on Agatha Christie's The Witness for The Prosecution."And in 2017, when Justice Indira Banerjee was at the Madras High Court and we were celebrating 125 years of the Court, I told her that I wished to dramatise some of this. She encouraged me highly. Therefore, if you noticed, the play opens with a screen grab from the 125 years celebrations," Rajah said. Rajah also said that though he is used to appearing in high profile cases before the cCurt in real life, he did have to prepare for the role of the veteran KM Munshi. "In court, I am persuasive without being dramatic, but here, I had to put in a lot of drama in the way I spoke and argued, because a theatre performance cannot be dull. In real life though, if you are too dramatic, your case will definitely get dismissed!" he said. .There were at least ten serving judges of the Madras High Court in the audience and everyone of them said they enjoyed the play immensely. They particularly liked the fact that it was almost as if one was witnessing actual court proceedings. "It was very realistic," the judges said. Rajah said that he did not to prod any of the judges or members of the Bar to come and attend the play. "Many of the current members of the Bar and the Bench are enthusiastic about theatre. As word spread in the High Court about the play, several people began asking me about it. They were happy that our high court was being represented in this way. Our primary purpose was to highlight how the judiciary works," Rajah said.