For the Love of Sylvia

At 37, handsome Commander Kavas Nanavati could consider himself fortunate. He was second officer on the cruiser Mysore, India's flagship; he had an excellent World War II record, ranging from convoy duty on the Murmansk run to the Anzio landing on the Italian coast; he had a comfortable home in Bombay, and his 28-year-old English wife, Sylvia, had borne him three attractive children. Nanavati was a good bet to become commander in chief of the Indian navy one day.

But last spring, Kavas Nanavati asked his wife a dangerous question: Why was she acting so cold toward him? Sylvia confessed that she was having an affair with a Bombay businessman named Prem Ahuja. After a painful discussion, Nanavati drove to his ship in Bombay harbor, checked out a .38 service revolver from the Mysore's armory. His next stop was the apartment of Philanderer Ahuja, whom he surprised as he was stepping from his bath. In a struggle over the gun, according to Nanavati, he shot Ahuja three times and killed him. Nanavati then surrendered himself to the Indian navy's provost marshal.

The trial thrilled all India. Commander Nanavati appeared in court in full beribboned uniform, and arrived and departed each day in a navy Jeep. The ecstatic press and public hailed him as ''the Gregory Peck of the Indian navy." His penitent wife, demure in a white blouse and a white sari, testified for him. The commander in chief of the navy described Nanavati in court as "honest, sober, efficient, and a man of character.'' Emotional Indian women mailed the commander 100-rupee notes ($21) as contributions toward his defense, and the bills bore the lipstick imprint of their kisses, as well as their names and addresses. Toy counters were crowded with "Nanavati" cap pistols so that Indian small fry could re-enact the killing. Bombay teen-agers put new words to the tune of Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley:

You're not going to hang, Nanavati,

you don't have to cry;

Hold up your head, Nanavati, 'cause you

ain't going to die.

The jury concurred, and in October, by a vote of 8 to 1, found the commander not guilty. A crowd of 5,000 outside the courtroom broke into cheers; people knelt down on traffic islands to give thanks. The only discordant note came from the presiding judge. He ruled that the jury's verdict was "perverse," and he insisted on referring the case to Bombay's high court for review. Its decision: Nanavati was guilty as charged, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

But the high court last week discovered that it was easier to sentence Commander Nanavati than to jail him. When police went to naval headquarters to serve the warrant, they were halted by a dramatic order from the governor of Bombay state, suspending the life sentence until Nanavati's application to appeal to the Indian Supreme Court could be heard. Newsmen predictably turned to India's ultimate moral authority: Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. What, they demanded, was Nehru's reaction to this arbitrary flouting of the high court's order? Genially, Nehru admitted that naval headquarters had appealed to him for help, and that he had given "advice" that had resulted in suspending the court's order. Though himself a lawyer and graduate of London's Inner Temple, Nehru was clearly in this instance on the side of the public and the navy, and added airily: "I suppose it is quite natural for them to take an interest in one of their senior colleagues."

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