One day, a merchant whose house was burgled approached Birbal for advise. He suspected one of his servant to have stolen some jewels from his house. Birbal listened to the merchant’s appeal and decided to help him.
The next day, Birbal assembled all the servants in the merchant’s house and questioned them. When that did not help in identifying the culprit, Birbal took out four sticks and gave one to each of the servants.
‘These sticks are magical. They have the power of growing longer if they are in the possession of a thief,’ informed Birbal to the four servants. ‘Now keep them with you and I want to see the sticks again tomorrow.’
The next morning Birbal inspected the sticks he had given to the servants. Three of them remained the same length as before. But, one stick had been cut short by 2 inches.
Birbal instantly declared the servant whose stick was shorter than the other three as the thief.
‘But how can you be certain about that servant’s guilt, Raja Birbal? I thought that one of the servants whose sticks were longer would be the culprit,’ asked the merchant with shocked relief.
Birbal smiled.
‘That’s simple, my friend. The sticks were not magical. However, that thought led the actual thief to think that his stick would magically grow longer by the next day. So he decided to remedy that by cutting his stick shorter by 2 inches in the hope that it would grow back to normal length and he would not get caught. And that led to his downfall.’
~ A David Singh
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