Colonial prosecutors read ordinary merchant correspondence as coded sedition

Evidence

The government claimed the books and letters contained coded references to money sent to the frontier via messengers and hundis (bills of exchange). The brothers’ lawyers protested that Amir Khan’s connection to the convicted Wahhabi was purely a business relationship; the convicted man was a meat packer and Amir was a hide merchant. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 72

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the hundi as forensic evidence — how colonial courts turned the instrument of Indian credit into proof of conspiracy.
• DEFINE: Defines hundi as a bill of exchange, the informal credit instrument central to Indian trade.