Musings: Why didn't three close range shots from a real .420 Webley & Scott revolver kill actors MGR and M R Radha?
By Thomas Kannamala
Bullet is the hero: Villain Actor M R Radha (MRR) had fired three shots from a real revolver with live bullets- one at Matinee Idol M G Ramachandran (MGR) and two upon himself on January 12,1967.
Both sustained serious bullet injuries fired from point-blank range but survived.
'Very few people know the mystery behind the survival of the actors,’ said Dr.Prof.Pakkiri Chandrasekharan, former Director of the Tamil Nadu Forensic Science Laboratory, when I posed this question to him.
Both of us were sitting in the posh Chennai Presidency Club Bar, discussing his future articles for the Harrington Post’ news weekly which I was editing at that time. He wrote a column for our weekly for nearly ten years till I left the weekly in 2016.
The media-savvy professor enjoyed sharing his crime-related stories with friends. I was one among them. As readers know, I got the scoop about the drunken Indian Airlines pilot in Chennai who crashed his aircraft while taking off the morning Mumbai flight. Without any hesitation, he began.
“Well, Tom. MGR himself, after he became the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, had asked me this question. I am now sharing the same information with you, adding some of my own observations.’
Professor recalled the story.
MGR and MRR were good friends. They had gone together to the licensed arms dealers of Chennai, P.ORR & Sons in the 1950s, and bought two identical .420 Webley & Scott revolvers. These powerful weapons had seven broad grooves and lands inside the barrels, which produced identical striation marks on the bullets when fired. It had a right-hand twist, 4-inch barrels, and 25-yard effective lethal range.
The trigger required about 20 pounds of pressure to fire.
While MGR regularly renewed his licence, MRR did not renew it after 1964. So when the shooting took place, MRR was using a weapon without a valid licence.
During the investigation, it was found out that all three bullets were fired from the MRR-owned revolver and identical to the.420 gauge `Kynoch’ bullets that remained in it.
`Now Tom, the real hero of this crime story is the.420-gauge Kynoch bullets that saved both the actors. I found out from the bills that MRR had purchased these bullets along with the gun. He kept the container with the bullet in his office table drawer. He used to open and shut this drawer at least five to ten times every day, at times violently in keeping with his nature. This literally shook the container and the bullets. Over a period of time, the crimping on the bullet got loosened’, the Professor explained.
Probably watching my puzzled expression, he continued: `A cartridge has a projectile, casing, cordite, the primer to ignite the cordite and a rim. The rim held the projectile and other parts together.
The rim is fixed on the bullet by crimping. Because of the vibration for over several years, the crimping got loosened. It lost the real power bite and was like a shaky tooth when MRR loaded the bullets into his gun. When he pressed the trigger, the cordite burnt, and pushed out the bullet, but it did not have the muscle velocity to cause lethal damage.’
As an afterthought, the Professor sang a famous MGR movie song.
“Seitha dharmam thalai kakkum; thakka samayathil uyir kakkum”
(Good deeds would always protect the life of a virtuous man)
