A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of medical jurisprudence for India : including the outline of a history of crime against the person in India / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    726/902 (page 690)
    The punishments vary according to the respective castes of die parties. There are six paragraphs, of which it will he sufficient to quote three. If a man, either by violence, or hy permission, thrusts his finger into the pudendum of an unmarried girl of a superior caste, the Magistrate shall confiscate all his possession, and put him to death. If one unmarried girl, hy thrusting her finger, &c, should make a passage, the Magistrate shall fine her two hundred puns of cowries, and give her ten lashes with a whip. If a married woman hy thrusting her fingers, &c, should make a passage, the Magistrate shall cut off the hair of that woman's head ; and, if she thus thrust her finger a second time, he shall cut off two of her fingers, and cause her to be exposed through the whole city mounted on an ass.—(pp. 277-78.)* Our criminal reports contain several instances, in addition to those given above, in which such uunatural mechanical force was undoubtedly used. In 1853, a wretch, of Bancoorah, was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment, upon a charge of having committed a Rape upon a girl about ten or eleven years of age, married, but living apart from her husband. There was every reason to believe the statements of the child, that he took a small lattee, or stick, which was in her hand, and, after using it, ' ad deobstruendam viam,' to considerable effusion of blood, succeeded in completing his purpose. The injury inflicted does not appear to have been dangerous.f In 1868, Sookoor Mahomed was found guilty, at Sylhet, of the cul- pable homicide of his wife, who was at an age unfit for sexual intercourse, and was wounded from the effects of violence used in a forcible violation of her person by her husband. Unfortunately the medical evidence is not given. The Judge of the Court of appeal remarked that although the deceased is said by the witnesses to have been eleven or twelve years old, and had nearly attained the age of puberty, there is not only the cruel violence of the act, from which death ensued, but the medical evidence shows that the unfortunate victim was, for some time previously, subjected to unnatural practices.} The following case also appears to me to come within this category. Sobauee Doss, also of Sylhet, was offended with his wife, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, for going without him to a feast given by a neighbour. It was proved, by the evidence of eye-witnesses, that he tied her hands together, * Tennant (Vol. I., p. 171) views these rules as parallel with those of the Levitical Code, and considers that they are intended to punish those acts by which the tokens of virginity may be destroyed. While they had this operation, it is also clear that they met, in the fullest jios^itilc manner, the crime which is the object of the present enquiry. f Nizamut Adawhu Reports, N. W. P., 30th November 1853, p. 327. J Nizamut Adawlut Reports, May 31st, 1858, p. 199. There may be a doubt regarding the meaning of this expression, but 1 believe that it refers to the extraneous force in question.