Murder At La Martiniere

ON March 7, at the bachelor's house near one of India's premier institutions, the 152-year-old La Martiniere College in Lucknow, Frederick Gomes, 31, slept as usual. Assistant warden and physical training instructor at the college, Gomes had a very predictable routine. He woke up at 5.30 am, took his two Alsatians for a walk, exercised and then went to his parents' for breakfast. This day, on Shivratri, however, he awoke to cracks of the .763 Mauser and the .380 pistol aimed at him from a broken window pane in his room at the back of the building.

Though there's no witness to the actual killing, here's the police's reconstruction of Gomes' last moments. He leaps out of his room after the first shots, which miss him, and into the corridor. The two killers run to the front and shoot at him. Gomes runs back to his room, shuts the door, barricades it with a chair but the killers return to the back and finally nail him.

Gomes was found slumped on the chair by neighbour S. Rodriguez. Of the 18 shots taken at him, he had consumed eight—four in the chest, one in the leg, two on his back and the fatal one on his temple. Throughout the struggle, strangely, Gomes was silent and so were his Alsatians. Rodriguez, in the room next to him, hid under his bed after the first few shots.

A 100 yards away, college captain Amit Rana was preparing to go to Gomes with a few other boys to seek permission to visit a temple on the occasion of Shivratri. He and others heard the shots and so did Gomes' parents but realised the tragic significance only later.

Says Neil A. O'Brien, an Anglo-Indian recently nominated to Parliament: "After the 1857 mutiny this is only the second occasion that the school has been linked to such violence." O'Brien refers to the 142-day siege at the Residency in Lucknow, in which for the first time Britain called upon schoolboys to fight and 67 La Martiniere boys

responded. They served as hospital attendants, domestics and messengers and showed remarkable ingenuity in erecting a semaphore on the Residency tower which proved of immense value, enabling contact between the besieged forces and Campbell's relieving column in mid-November of that year.

While all but two boys came out alive, 14 'senior' boys (between the ages of 10 and 15) bore arms in defence of the Martiniere Post at the Residency. What with the threatened assaults of the rebels, guarding the post took immense courage, especially at night when most of the attacks, real and feigned, took place. For over a month this duty was left entirely to the college.

This February 8, an air pistol converted to a .22 was discovered by Gomes in the locker of Amit Raj, one of the 218-odd boarders at the school. A Class 10 student, Raj was the last link in a chain of at least 10 Martiniere boys amongst whom the pistol was circulating for two months before its discovery. The chain before Raj reportedly went like Ajay Sharma,

Farhat Ali Khan, Syed Farhan, Gaurav Chaturvedi, Ritnesh Nigam, Zaheer, F. Beg, Shane Robinson and Amit Robert. While some were in Class 10, others were in the 11th. The going rate for the weapon was Rs 500 for a buy.

After the discovery of the weapon, Gomes beat Raj black and blue and took him to the principal, Elton D'Souza. D'Souza confiscated the weapon, called the local guardians or parents of five of the students concerned and told them that their wards were no longer welcome at the institution except on days when they had to take examinations. The matter was considered hushed up so far.

D'Souza did not bargain for the Gomes murder, which provided a new twist to the situation. Not having even reported the incident, which was a violation of the Indian Arms Act, D'Souza reportedly submitted the weapon to District Magistrate Pradeep Shukla only after the murder. In his two-line submission to Shukla, he simply said the weapon was discovered on the premises. Here, D'Souza might have been acting on the instructions of certain local guardians who are influential IAS officers.

WHILE at the moment there's no link between the weapon (and those who handled it) and Gomes' murder, many old students and Lucknow observers say the two incidents are just a "precipitation of accumulated weaknesses" that Martiniere has gradually allowed itself to slither into. Criticism is particularly heavy of D'Souza, whose jitteriness and lack of transparency in handling the incidents is attributed to administrative ineptness. Says SP (city) B.P. Singh: "D'Souza's been uncooperative. He tried to hush up the whole thing. He should realise that the interests of the institution are better served by coming forward with all the details. Misdemeanours shouldn't be swept under the carpet."

 One of the details that D'Souza owned up to only after the police discovered it for themselves was an incident on February 18. Some hoodlums came by Gomes' bachelor residence in a Maruti car, around 9 pm, fired some shots in the air and threatened him with dire consequences. A guard witness to the incident reported the matter to D'Souza, but the latter took no action. Says Singh: "If these things had been brought to our notice in time, things might have been different."

 But murder motives remain elusive. Says SSP Rajni Kant Mishra: "Gomes didn't have any close friends. His mother has some share in property at Alambagh but it's not disputed. He didn't have girlfriends. His interests were just bikes and dogs. Also, the weapons used in his murder are very rare. Out of the 10,000 licensed weapon holders in Lucknow, maybe 50 have those."

 In fact, Gomes owned three bikes, one of them a GSA which was parked right next to his room. Employed by D'Souza in October last year, Gomes was also a former student and college captain of the school. Easily provoked, Amit Rana calls Gomes a nice person but a little 'thick-headed'. In an incident two months back, Gomes slapped Rana in front of the other boys for ragging the new Class 11 boys. D'Souza hauled up both Gomes and Rana for the incident.

There are some other incidents which the police are probing. This year a student, allegedly a grandson of late chief minister Vir Bahadur Singh, headed a group of students from the KKC college to beat up a Martiniere student. Gomes foiled the attempt and the assailants threatened him. He also had a tiff with someone a day before his death at a city Montessori school, where he was an invigilator for an Indian School Certificate exam. Moreover, rumour has it that the night before his death he went with a friend to attempt a reconciliation. Some say he had received a 'take care' letter. The police are also delving deep into his past. In his student days at Martiniere he had a running battle with some students from Mahilabad. Some say it was this old conflict which sparked off again. Meanwhile, two areas, Martinpura and Jiamau, adjoining the school are also notorious. Says Shukla: "Jiamau is the operating area of Suraj Pal Yadav's gang." And Martinpura saw the murder of Jagdish Prasad Yadav, former state Congress president, in October 1995.

The impact of the murder on teachers is quite palpable. The general mood is that if an insider is involved, it's a tough price to pay for doing one's duty. Gomes' father, G.F. Gomes, a former Martiniere employee, is himself grief-stricken and clueless. Says he: "Frederick never told us anything. He just kept to himself." But even as the police look for clues and plan on interrogating the students after their exams, the legacy of Claud Martin, founder of the La Martiniere schools at Lucknow, Calcutta and Lyon, looks distinctly sullied.