The Trial of Mangal Pandey: State Papers presents the official records of the trial that culminated in the death sentence of Mangal Pandey, hailed by some as the one who initiated India’s First War of Independence in 1857, and dismissed by others as a disgruntled sepoy, who under the influence of bhang, defied the writ of the British.
   The trial records throw fresh light on Mangal Pandey’s role in the First War of Independence in 1857, leaving the responsibility of discerning an accident from a deliberate act of rebellion solely with the reader.