EMPEROR Vs. SHAFI AHMED NABI AHMED

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Their lordships have repeatedly announced that in dealing with petitions for special leave to appeal against sentences pronounced in the criminal Courts of the various Dominions of the King, they will not act as a Court of Criminal Appeal, and will not, to use the words of Lord Watson in Dillet's case (1887) 18 App. Cas. 459. advise His Majesty to " review or interfere with the course of criminal proceedings, unless it is shown that, by a disregard of the forma of legal process, or by some violation of the principles of natural justice, or otherwise, substantial and grave injustice has been done.

(2.) In the present case the first point urged by the petitioners is that there had been such copious and prejudicial newspaper comment on the crime committed that a fair trial by a jury was impossible in Bombay.

(3.) It is in the power of the Governor-General of India, if he thinks that in the state of public feeling a fair trial could not be obtained in the place where the offence would ordinarily be tried, to order that the trial be held elsewhere. An application was made to him to so order and was refused. To ask the Board to declare that such a refusal of the Governor-General, who had all the advantages of being in the country and of judging of the real state of public feeling, amounted to a violation of the principles of natural justice is nothing less than preposterous, and their lordships cannot too strongly qualify the impropriety and uselessness of such a demand.