In 1891, two girls fell to their deaths from a Mumbai clock tower. This book revisits such incidents
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For generations of cricket-lovers practising their craft on the wide expanse of Mumbai’s Oval Maidan, the Rajabai Tower across the road has always been a benign, if imposing, presence. Flanked by the magisterial splendour of the Bombay High Court and the old Secretariat, the 280-foot-high clock tower is one of the defining features of the University Library – in itself an architectural marvel. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott and named after the mother of the pioneering industrialist Premchand Roychand who funded its construction, the clock tower is also known as Mumbai’s Big Ben, by which it is said to have been inspired. But never since its completion in 1878 had the yellow Porbunderstone building figured in the history of the country’s premier metropolis – until the Saturday afternoon of April 25, 1891, when two young Parsi women fell (or were thrown) to their deaths from its looming height.
The two bodies hit the ground within a minute of one another.