§ 9. Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India the result of his inquiries into the prevalence of whipping sentences in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and in Burma?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe Secretary of State has received reports from the two local governments concerned, and is satisfied that in both provinces the spirit as well as the letter of the Whipping Act of 1909 is carefully observed, and that the punishment of whipping is in neither case unduly awarded.
§ 10. Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLasked how many judicial sentences for whipping were passed in India, province by province, during the years 1911 and 1912?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe figures will be circulated with the Votes. [See Written Answers this date.]
§ Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLMay I ask if the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh are at the top of the list?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe figures will be circulated to-night. I have not got them here, but as far as my recollection goes they are.
§ 11. Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that during the years 1902–11 no fewer than twenty-six Indians who had been tried on capital charges by session judges, and having stood in peril of their lives had been acquitted, were subsequently, on appeals preferred by Government against these orders of acquittal, convicted of a capital offence, sentenced to death, and actually executed; whether the system under which in India persons tried for murder and acquitted can subsequently be re-tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed, applies only to persons of 747 Indian birth and not to persons of European birth and descent and is of recent origin; whether in these appeals from acquittals on capital charges instituted by the Indian Government, the witnesses in the court below are not produced, their evidence given in that court being simply perused by the judges, and that the accused persons themselves are not necessarily present; and whether the Secretary of State for India, who some months ago had decided to consider if there were grounds for re-examining this method of procedure in conducting such appeals, has yet taken the matter into consideration; and, if so, whether he has decided that the same method of trial for capital crimes should obtain for Indians and for Europeans alike, that in cases other than capital in which appeals from acquittals are allowed this procedure should be reformed; and, if so, what are the contemplated reforms in that procedure?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The system dates, as my hon. and learned Friend is aware, from 1872; that it indirectly applies in the manner stated in the second part I have already explained in my answer to him on the 8th July last. The answer to the third part is in the affirmative, except that the Appellate Court may take additional evidence. With regard to the remainder of the question, the Secretary of State has under consideration the whole of the important question of appeals against acquittals in all its bearings; no decision has yet been reached.
§ Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLIs the hon. Gentleman aware that this appeal against acquittals was instituted by Sir Fitzjames Stephen in order to prevent Europeans being improperly acquitted, and that it is now being used against a different class of persons in India?
§ Mr. MONTAGUI heard the hon. and learned Gentleman argue that.
§ 12. Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether he is aware that, of the twenty-six cases in which, during the years 1902–1911, Indians acquitted as the result of trials before sessions judges on capital charges were subsequently re-tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and actually executed, no fewer than thirteen were in the United Provinces and not one in 748 Bengal; and whether he can assign any reason for this divergence in the number of death sentences executed on prisoners in the first instance acquitted of murder in the United Provinces and in Bengal?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. With regard to the second part, I would hesitate to give an opinion which, having regard to the differences between one province and another, would not be authoritative.
§ Mr. SWIFT MacNEILLIs the hon. Gentleman aware that the judges upon the Bengal Bench, especially the Chief Justice, have expressed themselves in unmeasured terms about the Executive action?