When the Court assembled next day Nalini thus addressed the judge:
"May it please your honour, I have, by the greatest good luck,
obtained certain evidence which will, I think, place this case in a new
light". On getting leave to adduce an additional witness, he beckoned
to an old man, standing at the back of the Court, who entered the
witness-box and declared that his name was Rám Harak and that he was
a dismissed servant of the prisoner. This was a curious opening for
a witness for the defence, and dead silence fell on the Court while
Rám Harak proceeded to swear that it was he, and not Debendra Babu,
who had been intimate with the deceased, and that she had poisoned
herself to avoid excommunication.

"Did she tell you so herself?" asked the judge sharply.

"No, your highness; I learnt this only yesterday from Maina Bibi,
Karim's own sister; Piyari Bibi, Sádhu's daughter; and Nasiban Bibi,
his sister-in-law, who all lived with the deceased."

The Government Pleader at once objected to this statement being
recorded, as it was hearsay. Nalini, however, assured the judge
that the eye-witnesses were in attendance, and called them, one
by one, to give evidence. Passing strange was their story. On the
evening of Siráji's death they found her writhing in agony on the
floor and, on being questioned, she gasped out that she could bear
her kinsfolks' tyranny no longer. They had just told her that she
was to be excommunicated for intriguing with an infidel. So she had
got some yellow arsenic from the domes (low-caste leather-dressers)
and swallowed several tolas weight of the poison in milk. The other
women were thunderstruck. They sat down beside her and mingled their
lamentations until Siráji's sufferings ended for ever. They afterwards