MUHAMMAD NAWAZ ALIAS NAZU Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Judicial Committee has before it this morning 13 petitions for special leave to appeal in criminal cases in forma pauperis. All the proposed appeals are from the High Court of Judicature at Lahore, which in each instance has confirmed the decision of a Sessions Judge sentencing the petitioner to death for murder. In each of these 13 cases the papers before their Lordships include (as R. 8 of the Judicial Committee Rules requires) a certificate signed by counsel in India that the petitioner has reasonable grounds of appeal to this Board. Their Lordships regret to find that, with the possible exception of the petition in the case of Rehmat V/s. King- Emperor, there is no basis whatever on which a certificate could, or should, have been given expressing the opinion that there were grounds on which the petition could properly be presented. This is a very serious matter, not only because those who so certify are misusing their professional position, but because the due course of criminal justice is interfered with if the delay of application to the Board is interposed without any valid reason between the judgment of the Court in India and the due execution of the sentence which that Court thinks it right to pronounce.

(2.) Their Lordships' attention is called to the fact that this is not the first time that a batch of petitions has been brought before the Board praying, on wholly inadequate grounds, that appeals may be brought against death sentences for murder which have been duly confirmed by the High Court of Lahore. This has happened several times, e. g., in May last nine such petitions came before the Board from Lahore, together with one from Oudh, one from the North West Frontier Province, and one from Sind. In these cases also the certificates as to reasonable cause of appeal, without which no application was possible, were equally unwarranted. It is evident that there exists in parts of India, and especially in the Punjab, a serious error as to the strict and definite limits within which the Judicial Committee entertains appeals from a criminal sentence. Their Lordships must assume that these certificates are given under a misunderstanding of the true position, as otherwise some of them could only be explained as proceeding from an utter disregard of the solemn and serious responsibilities of the counsel who certify. Their Lordships therefore desire to restate, in unmistakable terms, the limits of the jurisdiction exercised in criminal appeals by the Judicial Committee, and trust that this explanation will be carefully noted in the quarters where it seems to be needed and that the practice, of which their Lordships have to complain, will cease.

(3.) The Judicial Committee is not a revising Court of criminal appeal : that is to say, it is not prepared or required to re-try a criminal case, and does not concern itself with the weight of evidence, or the conflict of evidence or with inferences drawn from evidence, or with questions as to corroboration or contradiction of testimony, or as to whether there was sufficient evidence to satisfy the burden of proof. Neither is it concerned to review the exercise by the previous tribunal of its discretion as to permitting cross-examination as a hostile witness or in awarding particular punishments. In some of the certificates of counsel which are before their Lordships in connexion with the present set of petitions the certificate sets out particular reasons why it is considered that there is a reasonable ground for appeal, and these reasons disclose that the certifying counsel has not appreciated, or allowed for, the fact that the Judicial Committee cannot be asked to review the facts of a criminal case, or set aside conclusions of fact at which the tribunal has arrived. In all such cases an appeal on such grounds is useless, and is indeed an abuse of the process of the Court.