A woman’s fowl was stolen by her neighbour, who caught it on its straying into her house, and immediately cooked and made a meal off it. The owner had seen the bird enter the house of her neighbour, and on its non-return questioned her about it, but the culprit swore, by all the gods in the creation, that she had never set eyes on it. The owner, thereupon, complained to Mariada Ramanna, and the thief still persisting in her protestation of innocence, and there being no evidence, Mariada Ramanna dismissed the parties home.
He was however, determined upon getting at the root of the matter, and hit upon a piece of acting which would throw the thief off her guard, if thief off her guard. If thief she was, as he more than half suspected. Just as the two women were leaving the Court, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by them, Mariada Ramanna addressed the following words to those present in Court. " He there ever been seen such impudence on the part of a woman, who after stealing and eating up her neighbour’s fowl, has the effrontery to appear in Court actually with a feather of the slaughtered for sticking on her head, and then to deny all knowledge of the crime imputed to her! "This game of bluff, fortunately, met with success, for as soon as the words reached her ears, the stupid thief fell headlong into the snare set for her, and imaging that she had been detected, at once, passed her hand over her head to see if the fowl's feather was sticking to it. This settled matters for Mariada Ramanna, who at once concluded that she had appropriated the stray fowl and subjecting her to a interrogation, forced the truth from between her lips. He, therefore, inflicted a heavy fine upon the thief, who, in addition, was also ordered to compensate the owner for the loss of her fowl, and thus taught an abiding lesson that magna eat veritas prevalet.
