Ram Singh Kills Ram Chandra; U.S. Marshal Holohan
Kills Slayer
Swift Murder and Swifter Retribution Done in the Federal Court During Hindoo Trials
By, J.E. Boyden
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Murder stained the records of the German-Hindoo revolt trial yesterday noon. IN the twilight of the international drama of the law, Ram Singh, erst while landowner of Canada and one of the defendants accused of setting on foot a military enterprise to foment rebellion in British India, shot and killed Ram Chandra, editor of the Hindustan Gadar and revolutionary mouthpiece of Pacific Coast Hindoos, as he walked across the courtroom. While Ram Singh was still pumping bullets from an automatic pistol into Chandra's body Marshal James B. Holohan sent a bullet through Singh's neck, killing him instantly.
The whole awful tragedy passed with the speed of a spectacular motion picture. It was through and done in a moment and two crumpled bodies lay on the floor of the courtroom � Ram Chandra, lying at the very foot of the witness stand from which he had been informed against, the body of the murderer, stretched in front of the chair which had been occupied almost daily by Eckhardt H. von Schack for more than five months.
United States District Attorney John W. Preston had just finished his closing argument to the jury with these words: �I want you gentlemen to write the brightest chapter in your lives.� Judge William C. Van Fleet had given his usual admonitions to the jury and declared a recess until 2 o'clock .
As the Judge passed from the dais to his private chambers, the jury fled out of the courtroom, spectators, defendants, attorneys and court attaches keeping their places,
I can distinctly remember that John Preston was gathering up his papers. Behind him stood United States Marshal Holohan. Near Preston stood Mrs. Annette Abott Adams, Preston 's assistant. Across the table from Preston , Mrs. Adams and the marshal stood Otto Irving Wise and Stanley Moore, attorneys for the defense. To Wise's right and toward the court reporter's desk stood Theodore J. Roche, chief counsel for the German defendants, and near by stood George H. McGowan, attorney for Ram Chandra.
I started across the room toward Preston , intending to ask him when I could obtain a copy of his speech to the jury. I noticed that Ram Chandra arose from his place at the defendant's table and walked in his short stepped way toward his attorney, McGowan.
Then it was that I saw murder done � six feet away from a black turbaned Hindoo zealot, who sneaked his way, with head down, toward Ram Chandra. I thought Ram Singh was ill and fainting until I saw him ram his revolver into Ram Chandra's side and heard a sharp pop. Why I thought of it at the time, I don't know, but to me the report sounded like the peculiar plunk made when a boy snaps a pin against a sheet of paper from a rubber band. As the first bullet tore through Chandra's left side a little to the back, Chandra shuddered and turned away. With his head lowered and his body waving, Singh pulled the trigger three times more � a tattoo which brought a �What are you trying to do?� from Stanley Moore.
I can remember that John Preston used a very small proportion of those who volunteered.
�There were light covering fomes stood perfectly still, a sheaf of papers in his hand and a look of bewildered surprise on his face.
Mrs. Adams ran past Ram Chandra as he staggered and jerked crazily toward the witness stand.
Otto Wise and Stanley Moore jumped toward Singh with his gun half up his sleeve, snaking and waving to get another shot at Chandra. Sergeant Cole, head of the military guard the day before, had come over to hear Preston 's speech. He was unarmed but he seized a chair and started for Singh.
Walter Sauerback former navigating officer of the interned gunboat Goier, dived at Singh as he slid after Chandra, but Stanley Moore jumped ahead of him and seized the crazed Hindoo.
For crazed he was. His eyes bulged and his mouth drooled.
Holohan Kills Murderer
Just as Moore seized him, Marshal Holohan, with an articulate growl, hurled himself toward Singh. I can remember that Him Holohan tried to wade through the prosecutor's table, brushing Preston aside and jamming the table against Theodore Roshe with sufficient force to knock him down.
As Moore struggled to wrest the revolver from Singh, Holohan strode forward a little pucker between his eyes and his face gray as death. Singh with his head still down and still with that crazy wobbling of his body, struggled to pull the trigger, but it did not respond.
Singh half jerked free from Moore as Holohan shot.
The bullet spun him around as if he were a wax figure on a pedestal. Then he sank in a heap, rolled over on his face and with a heave of his shoulders, died.
Healey's Narrow Escape
I can remember that while these flickering events tumbled over each other, Timothy Healey, attorney for Bhagwan Singh and the Gadar group aligned against the Ram Chandra faction, gazed with wide-eyed horror. Had Holohan's bullet failed to find its mark in Singh's body, Healey must have been close to death or a wound.
I can remember, too, that in the wild scramble and ducking for cover as the bullets whipped a heavy chair struck me in the right knee. Facing the Marshal at the time I feared I had been shot.
And during every second of the time that the shooting was going on, the inarticulate growl from Holohan was the only human sound I can remember that Matt Brady, the door tender, passed Singh's pistol to one of the marshal's men � and then for no accountable reason, every spectator of the only shooting in a Federal Court on the Pacific Coast, began to talk. It was a Babel of incoherency.
Death Comes to Chandra
With tears in his eyes, Otto Irving Wise, pale and with lips aquiver, puts his arms around District Attorney Preston and said: �Thank God, John, you are saved to us yet!�
From her haven of safety behind Judge Van Fleet's desk Mrs. Adams pointed at Chandra's body. �He's still alive,� she said.
A woman spectator knelt beside the dying Hindoo, felt his pulse and said a physician would be useless. Almost at the same instant Chandra opened his eyes, stared unseeingly and ceased to breathe.
Defendants Terrified
With the unleashing of tongues several of the defendant led by Captain Heinrish Eelbo, former master of the interned German ship Ahlers, fled from the courtroom. They crush at the door became so wild that Henry W. Kauffmann, former chancellor of the German Consulate in San Francisco, was hurled against the doorjamb, raising a lump under his right eye.
Some idea of the strain under which Tim Healy labored may be gleaned that blood trickled from his mouth. He had bitten his tongue during those curiously terrifying moments when Singh was pumping bullets into Ram Chandra's side and back.
As Captain Eelbo gained the freedom of the corridor, Sergeant Caveney and Privates Mayberry and Little, the military guard of the German defendants, whipped out their automatic pistols.
�Halt!� yelled Private Little, as the crown of excited defendants and spectators surged toward the corridor exit. Captain Eelbo either failed to hear the command or ignored it, and Little knocked him down with a blow on the neck. The crown halted and the defendants were herded back into the courtroom.
Then informed that murder had been committed in his courtroom, Judge Van Fleet dashed from his private chambers and gained his bench with a leap.
�What does this mean?� Judge Van Fleet demanded as he pounded on his desk with a half-filled water glass. �Is John Preston shot?�
�Mr. Marshal, take every defendant into custody at once,� the Court ordered. �Make a rigid investigation of this disgraceful affair!�
Keep Their Seats
During the swift progress of events, most of the Hindoo defendants kept their seats. Dr. Chandra K Chakravarty, confessed head of the Hindoo wing of the conspiracy, never took his yeses from Marshal Holohan. Bhagwan Singh, confessed enemy of Ram Chandra was one who lost no time throwing himself to the floor when the bullets began to fly.
Looking at Ram Chandra's body I could not help but think of something he told me twenty-four hours before. We had been discussing Preston's accusation that Traknath Das was identified with two murders during the progress of Hindoo activities on the Pacific Coast and in China .
�I know about those matters and it grieves me,� Chandra told me �but I feel secure in this case because the Government is taking every precaution to keep violence from the conduct of this case.� This from a man who was murdered a day after expressing his faith that all would be well with him!
The motive for Singh's deed is clear, according to the Hindoos of the Bhagwan Singh faction.
Singh formerly owned hundreds of acres of land in Canada and was accounted a rich man. He had given thousands of dollars which were turned over to Ram Chandra. In private conversations the Bhagwan Singh faction freely has called Ram Chandra a grafter and has pointed to the many thousands of dollars given to the cause by Ram Singh. Most of this money, according to the Hindoos, was �retained� by Ram Chandra for his personal uses.
Chandra �Sold Out�
�Singh probably killed Chandra when he realized that, as Preston charged, Ram Chandra sold out to the Germans and kept for his own use money given by Singh and other Hindoos up and down the coast for the good of India,� one of the Hindoos said yesterday as he gazed at Ram Chandra's body. �Singh probably sat in judgment all through this case and then took it upon himself to hand out justice to Ram Chandra, according to his lights. Who knows?�
Federal Judge Van Fleet ordered Marshal Holohan and the Department of Justice to make a thorough investigation of how Singh smuggled the pistol into the courtroom.
Are Always Searched
Every Hindoo entering the courtroom is searched every morning and every afternoon. The probable fact is that the pistol used by Singh was passed to him during the recess at 11 o'clock yesterday morning.
According to the Marshal's office, witnesses already have been found who state tat Santokh Singh, a defendant, knows something of the manner in which the pistol was brought into the courtroom. Every defendant � German, American and Hindoo, regardless of bail or no bail � was in custody last night.
Ram Chandra is survived by a widow and two children at 5 Wood Street . I have no desire to tell of her appearance in the courtroom after her husband lay dead. A heart in the breaking is a grievous thing.
For further details please see: San Francisco Chronicle. April 24, 19 18. Page 1, column 3 and page 3 column 2.
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Ted. Sibia
tssibia@sikhpioneers.net