All eleven accused were found guilty. According to Muhammad Jafar, when the verdicts and sentences were pronounced not only the spectators in court but even the four Indian assessors had tears in their eyes: ‘They wished our release at heart, but when they found the judge and the commissioner inclined on punishing us, they got frightened and wrote that the crime had already been proved.’ Three of the prisoners were condemned to death and the remaining eight sentenced to transportation for life. In pronouncing sentence Sir Herbert Edwardes was in no doubt as to who was the most serious offender. ‘It is proved against the prisoner Yahya Ali,’ he declared,
that he has been the mainspring of the great treason which this trial has laid bare. He has been the religious preacher, spreading from his mosque at Patna, under the most solemn sanctions, the hateful principles of the Crescentade. He has enlisted subordinate Agents to collect money and preach the Moslem Jihad. He has deluded hundreds and thousands of his countrymen into treason and rebellion. He has plunged the Government of British India, by his intrigues, into a Frontier War, which has cost hundreds of lives… He belongs to a hereditarily disloyal and fanatical family. He aspires to the merit of a religious reformer, but instead of appealing to reason and to conscience… he seeks his end in political revolution.
Muhammad Jafar was the next to receive the court’s judgment. In his version of events, which conflicts in several material points with the official record, he declares that he heard with pride Edwardes’ closing remarks about how he had used his great intelligence to conspire against the Government, and that Edwardes would be happy to see him hanged: ‘I listened to the whole statement very calmly but in response to the last sentence I said, “It is God who decides about life and death. These things are not within your power. God has the power to finish you even before I die.” He was very angry to hear my response.’
The Wahhabi trial was Sir Herbert Edwardes’ last public duty before his early retirement, and he left for England as soon as it was over. His death from pneumonia three and a half years later was seen by Muhammad Jafar as God’s punishment.
As soon as sentence had been passed the convicts had their heads shaven and their long beards cut off, and their white robes and turbans were exchanged for rough prison garb consisting of a saffron-coloured suit of coarse dungaree cloth – to all intents, orange overalls. By Muhammad Jafar’s account, he and Yahya Ali rejoiced at their death sentences, the latter asserting that he felt as if he was ‘in heaven and was watching heavenly nymphs’. They were placed in the condemned cell in Amballa Jail, where their continuing high spirits astonished their many visitors, European and Indian: ‘Often they used to ask, “Soon you will be hanged. Why are you so happy?” We would only say that in our religion we attain martyrdom on being killed in this cruel way in the path of God and that was the reason for our happiness.’
However, the third prisoner sentenced to death was far from happy. He was Muhammad Shafi, a wealthy butcher in Delhi with contracts to supply meat to all the military cantonments along the Grand Trunk Road. Originally incriminated by Muhammad Jafar’s letter, Shafi was shown to be the movement’s main banker, using his agencies to move the Wahhabis’ money from one place to another while making a considerable profit in the process. Deeply involved though he was in the conspiracy, Shafi was not a committed Wahhabi. Several months after sentencing he turned approver in a bid to save his own life.
Captain Parsons and others in Amballa had in the meantime continued their efforts to assemble a sustainable case against Maulvi Ahmadullah. Armed with the fresh evidence from Shafi and from a second approver, a Patna shoe-merchant named Elahi Baksh, they were finally able to bring him to justice. The revelation by Elahi Baksh in his testimony in court that three persons named in various letters as Ahmed Ali, Mohomed Ali and Ahmad Khan were all aliases used by Ahmadullah appears to have been a turning point. The identification proved beyond doubt that Ahmadullah was ‘General Manager of the temporalities of the Kafilah [the name given to the Wahhabi’s secret supply route]’ and had abetted the waging of war against the Government of India ‘by traitorously furnishing supplies of men and money to fanatics at Sittana engaged in warring against the Queen’.
On 1 January 1865 a new up-country newspaper named The Pioneer[1] came into production and over the next three months charted not only the course of the trial of Ahmadullah Ali in Patna but also the public reaction to it, as the following extracts show:
2 January: The trial of Ahmud-oola, the chief Wahabee Moulvee of Patna, commences, we believe, today. The indefatigable Captain Parsons is now in Bankipore, assisting the Magistrate of Patna, Mr Ravenshaw.
11 January: Not deterred by the examples lately made in the case of the Patna and Umballa conspirators, some amiable gentlemen of the Wahabee persuasion have been getting up a minor conspiracy of their own in Purnea… A Moulvee has been collecting money from the faithful in anticipation of the ‘Jehad’, which will be inaugurated by the Twelth Imam, who is about to make his appearance in a flood of light and glory!
13 January: Mahomed Shuffee [Muhammad Shafi] has turned Queen’s Evidence, and the Delhi Mail says that his voluntary disclosures and the trial of Ahmad-oola at Patna, could lead to the hunting-up of the whole gang of traitors.
16 January: The Patna shoe-maker Iahee Buksh [Elahi Baksh] has been admitted as Queen’s Evidence. His disclosures have been of a very important character, and bear strongly against the Moulvee.
1 March: The Judge of Patna has sentenced Moulvee Ahmed-oolla to be hanged. The case against him was complete. A miserable attempt at defence broke down at once; the only witness examined, we are told, simply perjured himself. The verdict of the assessors was unanimous. Thus ends the last act of the Wahabee drama… Ahmed-oolla, we suppose, will lose no time in telegraphing to Sir Frederick (James) Halliday.
In the event, the Government decided at the appeal stage that to hang the three Wahhabi leaders would elevate them to martyrs. Their death sentences were commuted to transportation for life, and with seven of the other co-defendants from the two trials they were shipped in chains to the Government of India’s penal colony on the Andaman Islands. The banker Muhammad Shafi and the shoe-merchant Elahi Baksh were spared transportation because of the evidence they had provided. To Muhammad Jafar’s great vexation the former was released after one year in jail, although his properties, said to be worth five million rupees, were never returned to him. The goods and properties of all those found guilty were confiscated, and the great serai in Sadiqpore Road which had for so long served as the Wahhabis’ chota godown was demolished and the site converted to a public garden.