मुजरिम

A 1944 social drama from Shree Vishnu Cinetone directed by the veteran Nitin Bose, built around the moral weight of its title — 'Mujrim', the criminal or the accused. Headlined by Motilal and Leela Desai, the film belongs to the wartime crop of Hindi melodramas in which questions of guilt, accusation and conscience play out against a domestic backdrop, the action carried as much by its songs as by its plot.

The recorded song list documents at least five distinct titles set by Gyan Prakash Ghosh, split between two lyricists — Kailash Matwala ('Kisi Sunaye Apne Mann Ki Baat', 'Chandi Ka Ho Palna', 'Jeena Ya Mar Jana Hai') and Rammurti Chaturvedi ('Bhor Bhaye Jayenge Balam', 'Mori Dukaniya Aana Babu'). 'Jeena Ya Mar Jana Hai' appears in two versions. Rajkumari is the documented voice on 'Mori Dukaniya Aana Babu'.

Mujrim is notable chiefly as a film score by Gyan Prakash Ghosh (Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh), the Calcutta-trained percussionist, composer and tabla maestro whose film work in the 1940s sits at the meeting point of classical training and popular film idiom. His Hindi-film outings are comparatively rare, which makes this soundtrack — with lyrics by Rammurti Chaturvedi and Kailash Matwala — a documented data-point in his screen career.