DAL SINGH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case the appellant was convicted of murder by the Sessions Court of Jubbulpore and was sentenced to death. The Court of the Judicial Commissioner of the Central Provinces heard an appeal and dismissed it and confirmed the sentence under the provisions of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure.

(2.) A petition for leave to appeal was presented to the King in Council. It was argued before this Board in support of the petition that the judgments in the Courts in India had been vitiated by an illegal and prejudicial use of the police diaries in the case and that the credibility of the witnesses had been thereby wrongly estimated. What had taken place, it was alleged, had led to such a miscarriage of justice as to bring the conviction within the exceptional class of cases in which His Majesty in Council will review the proceedings in a criminal trial in India.

(3.) It is well settled that the unwritten principles of the Constitution of the Empire restrain the Judicial Committee from being used in general as a Court of Review in criminal cases. But while the Sovereign in Council does not interfere merely on the question whether the Court below has come to a proper conclusion as to guilt or innocence, such interference ought to take place where there has been a disregard of the proper forms of legal process, grievous and not merely technical in character, or a violation of principle in such a fashion as amounts to a denial of justice. Their Lordships have now heard full arguments in the case before them and have examined the procedure and evidence with some minuteness.