The Bengal ordinance

Lahore, Friday, October 31, 1924

THE Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Ordinance is one of the most drastic engines of repression that the inventive genius of the bureaucracy in India has perfected. It is, in fact, a new and revised edition of the Defence of India Rules and the Rowlatt Act; and not a few of its provisions are identical with those of the two defunct enactments. The ordinance is divisible into two parts, the first dealing with those cases which will be placed before the special tribunals to be created under it and the second with cases in which an order of the Executive Government will by itself be sufficient to deprive a man of his liberty. We will deal in this article only with the first part. Even a cursory perusal of the provisions of the ordinance is sufficient to convince any impartial critic that their only effect is to deprive the accused person of the benefit of those safeguards against wrongful conviction which the rules of procedure and evidence laid down by the ordinary criminal law of the country provide. The commitment proceedings, which give the accused a fair notice as to the charge against him and the evidence by which the prosecution proposes to establish that charge, are discarded. The most important departure from provisions of the Evidence Act is as follows:-- “Notwithstanding anything contained in the Indian Evidence Act, 1897, when the statement of any person has been recorded by any Magistrate, such statement may be admitted in evidence in any trial before Commissioners appointed under the ordinance if such person is dead or cannot be found or is incapable of giving evidence, and the Commissioners are of the opinion that such death, disappearance or incapacity has been caused in the interests of the accused.”