Please read this story patiently. The characters are a woodcutter, a priest, a bandit, a woman and her husband, and a common man. Here goes the story:

            The priest and the woodcutter are in a discussion which is then interrupted by the common man who shelters that place for rain. So now the three discusses the story of a murder. The woodcutter was the first person to see a dead body which he informs to the police immediately. He saw a woman’s hat, a rope and the dead body. The priest had seen the dead man alive three days back and he provided witness for the same. The woodcutter then narrates the scene in the courtyard. Scene moves to the courtyard now. A man brings a bandit whom he found lying near a horse as if he tried to steal the horse and the horse assaulted him. The post hereafter is going to capture the exact scene from now on.

Bandit: 

              I was lying there due to severe stomach ache. I know that I am going to be hanged but I am least bothered. It was me who killed that man. I saw a beautiful woman in the forest with that man and I was very much attracted by the woman’s beauty and so decided to have her. I isolated her from her husband and tied him up. In my attempt to harass her, she fought with a pearl lined dagger. I won the fight and her too. Then the woman made a proposal that only one of the men should be alive as she cannot be disgraceful to both. We had a big fight and at last I stabbed the husband with my sword. The woman fled from the place and I didn’t see the face of her after that. 

[The common man then said that he would have killed the woman as killing is not new to him. But the priest said that the woman also gave the witness.]

The woman:

The bandit raped me and fled. But my husband gave such a cold hatred look which I was unable to digest. His look had hatred as if I gave room to the bandit. I asked him to stop, cried a lot but he kept staring. I fainted after that and when I woke up my husband was stabbed by a dagger. I tried to kill myself but that also failed, after all it was my unlucky day.

[Now the witness is the husband’s spirit through a medium.]

The husband:

The bandit after his triumph started convincing my wife that he would marry my wife as she cannot live with me after such an incident. My wife accepted asking him to kill me which made the bandit also stun. The bandit asked me, “Is the idea of living with her still running in your mind even after hearing these words?” My ugly look made the bandit chase her to kill but she fled. Later I was untied. I stabbed myself with the dagger. Then I felt someone taking the dagger from my chest but within that darkness surrounded me.

[The woodcutter later says that neither of them are right as he saw the entire scene from the bush.]

The woodcutter:

After the rape, the bandit pleaded to the woman to marry him. The woman asked the bandit to fight with her husband. But the husband refused to fight for her since she is meaningless now and asked the woman to commit suicide. The woman said that only if he wins the bandit she can commit suicide and eventually the fight begins. The bandit wins not with valor but with tactics and kills the husband with a sword. The woman then fled, might be she thought thebandit was yet another man! 

The common man:

If the husband is killed by the sword then what happened to the dagger mentioned by the bandit? Did the earth swallow it? 

[The woodcutter later confesses that he took the dagger.]

            Now the only question in my mind is, “Was the person killed by a sword or a dagger?” Everyone spoke (or speaks) only the justice on their side. The prejudice remains a mystery till the end and even after the end (I mean the spirit’s witness). This is the story of the Japanese movie “Rashomon”directed by Akira Kurosawa.

            And the indirect question to the above question is “WHOIS SPEAKING THE TRUTH?”