Crime Immemorial

Twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Paterson Drury lived at 21a Carnegie Street in Dundee, Scotland, and worked as a machinist. Dundee, with its jute mills and bustling docks, was a hub for seafarers from across the Commonwealth, and on Saturday, November 25th, 1950, Andrew found himself in the heart of this transient world.

According to trial testimonies, he had ventured into a public house on Dock Street, a stone’s throw from the docks where ships from distant ports unloaded their cargoes. There, he crossed paths with a group of seamen from the SS Mahsud, a jute liner that had docked in Dundee just the day before, on November 24th. Among them was twenty-three-year-old Thaza Gul Bahadur, a Pathan seaman from what is now Pakistan, known among his crew as a Lascar (a term for South Asian sailors). Andrew, in a gesture of hospitality, bought rounds of whisky and beer for the group, even treating them to a bottle of liquor to extend the revelry.

As the evening wore on, the men—Andrew, Bahadur, and another Lascar seaman—stumbled out into the night. They made their way toward the Stannergate area, a rugged stretch along the Tay where footpaths wound between the Old Broughty Ferry Road and the river’s edge. Eyewitness accounts from a bus driver and conductor later painted a picture of inebriated camaraderie turning uneasy. The group reached a bus stop near the East Bridge steps, about forty yards from the future murder site. Here, the paths diverged: the other Lascar urged Bahadur to leave Andrew alone, appealing in broken English for peace. Andrew, perhaps too drunk to notice the tension, boarded a bus homeward. Or so it seemed.

Sometime after parting ways, Andrew was set upon on a secluded footpath, just west of those same steps. He was savagely stabbed—in the neck, body, arms, and leg—with a sharp blade. His attackers rifled through his pockets, making off with cash, a watch, and other valuables. Andrew staggered a short distance before collapsing, his cries lost to the wind off the Tay. It was not until the next morning, Sunday, November 26th, that a passerby stumbled upon his bloodied form. Paramedics rushed him to Dundee Royal Infirmary, but the wounds were too grave. Andrew Paterson Drury was pronounced dead on arrival.

Dundee’s police force, stretched thin in the austere years following rationing’s end, moved swiftly. The bus crew’s account pointed detectives straight to the SS Mahsud, moored in the harbor. On November 26th, officers boarded the vessel and zeroed in on Thaza Gul Bahadur’s quarters. In his sea chest, they uncovered a knife—its blade stained and matching the murder weapon’s description. Bahadur admitted ownership of the blade but denied any involvement.

Wrapped in a towel and tucked into his bunk were Andrew’s stolen belongings: his wallet, watch, and other items, still bearing the faint scent of the night’s indulgences. Confronted by the captain and charged with murder—via a translator—Bahadur’s response was measured: “I was with him. I did not hit him. I did not have a knife.” The words hung heavy, a partial admission laced with defiance.

Thaza Gul Bahadur was arrested and remanded. Initial interrogations revealed a tangled web of alibis. He claimed the group had shared drinks amicably, but tensions arose when Andrew Drury, slurring and generous, became a target for opportunists. The other Lascar seaman, a Hindu crewmate who spoke some English from prior voyages to Dundee, corroborated parts of the story but insisted on an intervention at the bus stop: pleas for Bahadur to back off, appeals to Andrew’s better judgment. “We had no such intent,” he testified later, when pressed on whether the robbery was premeditated.

Thaza Gul Bahadur’s trial opened in January 1951 at the High Court in Edinburgh, a somber affair under the weight of Scotland’s unique “not proven” verdict system—a middle ground between guilty and not guilty, reserved for cases where doubt lingers but malice cannot be ruled out.

Prosecutors painted Bahadur as the lone assailant, leveraging the damning evidence of the knife and stolen goods. The Pathan’s presence at the scene, his ownership of the weapon, and the proximity of Andrew’s possessions to his bunk seemed ironclad. Yet the defense sowed seeds of reasonable doubt. Why would Bahadur, a seasoned seaman with no prior record, risk everything for a few pounds? And crucially: Could the evidence have been planted? The towel-wrapped bundle in his bed, they argued, might have been slipped there by a crewmate seeking to deflect blame—or even by Andrew himself in a drunken haze, forgotten until tragedy struck.

The judge’s directions to the jury were pivotal. He cautioned against assuming guilt based solely on circumstantial ties, urging them to consider the possibility of frame-up amid the close quarters of a ship. After deliberation, the verdict came: not proven. Bahadur walked free, returning to the SS Mahsud and, presumably, the waves. The courtroom fell silent, the mystery unresolved.

Bahadur’s acquittal, while legally sound, left many convinced of his guilt, whispering of a “not proven” that felt like a dodge. Others saw it as a miscarriage, tainted by the era’s undercurrents of anti-immigrant bias toward South Asian sailors.

As of this writing in October 2025, Andrew Paterson Drury’s murder is still considered unsolved.