Release And Pardon

Edalji was released in 1906 after the Chief Justice in The Bahamas and several others had pleaded his case. But he was not pardoned, and the police kept him under surveillance. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was persuaded to ‘turn detective’ to prove Edalji’s innocence. This he acheived after eight months of work. Edalji was exonerated by a Home Office committee, although no compensation was awarded.

The case is related in Conan Doyle’s The Story of Mr George Edalji (1907, expanded and re-issued in 1985). It was given a fictional gloss by Julian Barnes in the novel Arthur and George (2005) and the novel was then turned into a play by David Edgar. A comprehensive non-fictional account of the case was published in 2006 in Conan Doyle and the Parson’s Son: The George Adelji Case written by Gordon Weaver.