HL Deb 23 May 1853 vol 127 cc492-3
The EARL of ELLENBOROUGH

wished to know whether there would be any objection to lay on the table the proceedings of the several courts martial held in India on the conduct of Lieutenant Sandon, of the 11th Bengal Light Dragoons? That officer, besides drawing his sword on his superior officer, on parade, had been charged, within a month, with three offences, all against natives; had been accused and convicted of severely beating his own behesti, a person of high caste, until he broke his arm. Nevertheless, he remained an officer of the Indian army, the sentence against him having been merely that he should be mulcted of six months' pay, and put back in his grade six months. That sentence had been confirmed, though not approved of by the Governor General, and Lieutenant Sandon remained an officer of the Indian army. Their Lordships might be assured that there was very great danger in keeping that officer in the regiment to which he still belonged. In this country if an officer could have so conducted himself he would have been punished by the civil authority, and, when he had been so, his name would soon have disappeared from the Army List. He hoped that it might be so in this case; that the Government would direct Lieutenant Sandon's prosecution before the Supreme Court; and that if the verdict was, as he apprehended it must be, against that officer, and the proper sentence passed by the Judge, the Government would think fit to remove him from the Army, to which he ought no longer to belong; for supposing the Court of Directors to decline removing him, the Government would have the right to recommend Her Majesty to do so by her sign manual. He had not thought it right that this should be known in England without comment in that House.

EARL GRANVILLE

saw no objection to the production of the papers. There was a regulation made by the home authorities, in their anxiety to protect the natives from cruelty or wrong on the part of any officers, to the effect that any officer so offending should forthwith be dismissed from the Army, and that the local authorities should send home the offender. He had no doubt that an early mail would show that this regulation had been enforced in the present instance.