More than half a century ago were the Parsis and Sindhis at each other’s throats in Bombay? A flashback to the events concerning the Cdr Kawas Nanavati murder case was published by The Free Press Journal (FPJ) on August 9, 2016, occasioned by the release of the film Rustom which is based on the incident (see "Nothing Parsi bu the name,” pg 37). The dramatis personae 
comprised the dashing Parsi naval officer, his English wife Sylvia and her playboy lover Prem Ahuja, a Sindhi businessman. A young lawyer named Ram Jethmalani (pictured), also a Sindhi, played a significant part, as did Russi Karanjia, the Parsi editor whose tabloid Blitz covered the happenings virtually frame by frame in an era when there was no television and long before the advent of social media.
According to Jethmalani, now a nonagenarian, it was a premeditated murder, an "open and shut case.” But "corruption set in very early in the case at the time of selection of the jurors. They had arranged that persons who are summoned as possible jurors had pro-Nanavati leanings. The saving grace was one honest guy. It was a perverse verdict,” he recalls, referring to the initial exoneration of the accused. The jury was later overruled by the sessions judge who, according to Jethmalani, was very clear in his mind that it was a case of murder.
The government of the day had become jittery lest the matter drive a wedge between the Sindhi and Parsi communities, Jethmalani told FPJ. He himself almost walked out because the prosecution strategy, which he had painstakingly prepared, was not followed by the public prosecutor. Having been hired by Ahuja’s sister Mamie, Jethmalani could only "assist” the public prosecutor, so his hands were tied.
At a much later date, after Nanavati had served three years of his sentence, Jethmalani claims he was instrumental in securing a pardon for him by way of a trade-off for a similar pardon given to a another prominent Sindhi businessman. According to FPJ, he helped "broker a cease fire” between the two "sniping minorities” thus defusing a case that he described as "a bomb.”