Beginning with the preliminary hearings in June 1929 and ending with the verdict in early 1933, followed by another six months of appeal hearings, the Meerut Conspiracy Case became the most expensive legal case in British imperial history. It tried thirty-two activists, revolutionaries, and trade unionists who had allegedly entered into a conspiracy to deprive the king-emperor of his sovereignty of British India, an offense punishable under section 121–A of the Indian penal code. The accused were hardly a cohesive and homogenous group in terms of geographic roots and ideological allegiances. The group comprised thirteen defendants from Bombay, ten from Bengal, five from Calcutta, and three from Punjab. Three additional defendants, Lester Hutchinson, Philip Spratt, and Benjamin Bradley, were British activists working on labor organization in India. More warrants had been issued, but some of the defendants were either abroad or had absconded to safe havens such as Portuguese Goa. All were brought to the remote city of Meerut, where the trial was to take place—far away from the defendants’ respective bases of support, and especially far from the trade union centers of Bombay and Calcutta.