In 1891, two girls fell to their deaths from a Mumbai clock tower. This book revisits such incidents

For generations of cricket-lovers practising their craft on the wide expanse of Mumbai’s Oval Maidan, the Rajabai Tower across the road has always been a benign, if imposing, presence. Flanked by the magisterial splendour of the Bombay High Court and the old Secretariat, the 280-foot-high clock tower is one of the defining features of the University Library – in itself an architectural marvel. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and named after the mother of the pioneering industrialist Premchand Roychand who funded its construction, the clock tower is also known as Mumbai’s Big Ben, by which it is said to have been inspired. But never since its completion in 1878 had the yellow Porbunderstone building figured in the history of the country’s premier metropolis – until the Saturday afternoon of April 25, 1891, when two young Parsi women fell (or were thrown) to their deaths from its looming height.

The two bodies hit the ground within a minute of one another.

Dadabhoy Pestonjee was waiting outside the Bombay High Court in his shigram (bullock cart) around 3.45 pm when he heard a dull thud, followed by another a few moments later. Something heavy, it seemed, had fallen in the University gardens a little distance away. He then heard a boy cry out that two Parsi ladies had fallen from the library’s clock tower. Jumping down from his cart, Pestonjee ran towards the roadway under the north side of the Rajabai Tower. Two young women lay on their backs in a pool of blood on the gravel-studded path. Pestonjee, by his own account, was first on the spot. Looking up, he observed that the telephone wire overhead was broken. Three other men, also Parsis, had arrived by now, and together they gently dragged the bodies under the shade of the library porch, even as a couple of policemen came running. The saree of one of the ladies being in disarray, Pestonjee tied a knot in it to cover up her body.

A crowd soon gathered, and as the younger of the two ladies showed faint signs of life, a buggy was summoned to take her to the nearby Goculdas Tejpal Hospital. It was too late for the unfortunate woman, however, and the doctors pronounced her dead on arrival. The body was then sent back, and on the orders of Deputy Commissioner of Police G.H. Gell, both corpses were placed in the entrance hall of the University Library.

In the meantime, some sightseers who were up in the tower while the tragedy occurred, and also those in the library, were detained for questioning. It was clear that the ladies had either jumped or had been pushed, and foul play was immediately suspected. An ugly rumour began circulating: the women had been decoyed to the tower by some men who had tried to molest them, and had either jumped from one of the windows on the third floor (where a window was found open) to save their honour, or had been thrown down by their assailants.

While it was obvious from their fair complexion and distinctive apparel that both the deceased were Parsis, none among the scores of people from the community who had by now descended on the library seemed to know who the women were. The suspicion of foul play was strengthened when an examination of the bodies by two Parsi doctors revealed scratch marks, possibly made by fingernails, on the thighs and breasts of the women. There was also a long tear in the trousers of the younger woman, and it was noted that her kushti (sacred thread) was missing. The elder lady’s mathabana (a thin white linen headscarf ) was also missing.

It took well over an hour for the city coroner, Dr Thomas Blaney, to arrive and examine the bodies. Finding that a positive identification was yet to be made, he ordered that the corpses be transferred to the morgue. Finally, even as stretchers were being organized, the dead women were identified as Bachoobai and Phirojbai, both of the Godrej family. With Dr Blaney’s permission, the bodies were then moved to the family residence at Frere Road, where they were kept overnight under a police guard.

Some startling facts were revealed at the inquest next morning. The two ladies had left their house the previous afternoon to visit Bachoobai’s aunt at Chira Bazar, a few kilometres away. They hadn’t told anyone that they were going to the Rajabai Tower, a revelation which came as a big surprise, if not a complete shock, to the family. The elder of the two, twenty-year-old Bachoobai, was the wife of Ardeshir Godrej, a student at Elphinstone College. Phirojbai, Ardeshir’s younger sister, only sixteen and a pupil at the Alexandra Girls’ School, was also married. The Godrej matriarch, Dosibai, revealed a curious, if somewhat prurient, fact during the inquiry: while both the girls had been married for some years, they were still virgins. Ardeshir, a modern and progressive husband (and two years younger than his wife) had resolved to wait till he completed his education before consummating his marriage. Phirojbai’s husband was a student at the J.J. Institution, and as they were both very young the couple did not live together as man and wife.

The two women had never been to the Rajabai Tower before, and neither had ever spoken about wanting to go there. The teenage Phirojbai never went out alone and was always accompanied by a servant on her way to school. Bachoobai did go out by herself occasionally, but only as far as her mother’s house at Dhobi Talao. No one could account for their presence at the tower that afternoon. Did they change their minds at the last minute and go there just for a lark, or had they deliberately lied, having set up a rendezvous with someone at the tower? Tongues started to wag and nasty, suggestive rumours began doing the rounds …

The question of suicide was also brought up, but did not seem very plausible. Ardeshir’s mother Dosibai said both girls had been very happy when they set out. They were also on the friendliest of terms with their husbands, and there was certainly no domestic distress to compel them to end their lives. The theory of an accidental fall was also mooted. Did one or both of the girls, while looking over the parapet, slip and fall? And did one of them, attempting to hold on to the other, also plunge to her death? The inquest, which was only meant to formally identify the bodies, and try and determine the circumstances under which the ladies met their deaths, did not take long. The coroner’s jury were then taken to the tower to examine the various rooms on each floor to ascertain if the ladies had fallen out of the third-floor window, or whether they had toppled over the veranda below the clock, or from the viewing gallery at the top. There were no conclusive answers to any of these questions, and the inquest was adjourned to April 29, when it would be held at the morgue, after the post-mortem was conducted.

Excerpted with permission from The Bombay House Heist and Other Forgotten True Crime Stories, Sunil Nair, Juggernaut.