SUBHAS CHANDRA BOSE Vs. RKNIGHT AND SONS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff Subhas Chandra Bose sues the defendants who are the proprietors and editor of the Statesman newspaper for damages for libel contained in their issue of 26 November 1924. The words complained of are part of a leading article of which the main subject matter is a speach made by the Earl of Lytton when Governor of Bengal at Maldah on the 24 of that month. This speech had been published in extenso in the issue of the 25 and no complaint is made on that publication.

(2.) In the previous month, namely on 25 October 1924, the Governor-General under Section 72, Government of India Act, made and promulgated an ordinance to supplement the ordinary Criminal Law in Bengal. This among other provisions gave power to the Local Government in certain circumstances to arrest persons whom it believed to be guilty of certain crimes and to commit them to jail or to intern them without trial. Under this ordinance and under the provisions of Regulation 3 of 1818 a considerable number of persons including the plaintiff were on 25 October 1924, arrested and lodged in jail. The ordinance was accompanied by a statement by the Governor-General of the reasons which had moved him to make the ordinance and on the same day there was published a resolution of the Government of Bengal explaining the reasons which had led the Governor-in-Council to ask the Governor- General to promulgate the ordinance.

(3.) The speech made by Lord Lytton at Maldah on 24 November 1924 contained this statement: But men who defy the law, who live and act outside the law, who menace the liberty of those live within it, who take upon themselves to decide without process of law who shall live and who shall die, these men have no right to the protection of law -- they are outlaws, they are a danger to the State and their liberty is forfeited. It is against such men and such men alone, that the special powers. which my Government have asked for and have obtained are being directed. Every single-man, who has been arrested under Regulation 3 of 1818 or under the new Ordinance, is a member of a terrorist organization that seeks to attain its objects by violence and intimidation that proposes, if not checked, to carry out more murders. Every man, too, who has been arrested is being detained, not on the isolated statements of a single informer but on evidence from many different sources unknown to each other, spread over many months, which has to satisfy the Government of Bengal, as well as two independent Judges, and in the case of the Regulation 3 prisoners, the Government of India and the Viceroy himself -- probably the best trained lawyer in India -- that he is not merely a member of, but an active participator in this terrorist conspiracy.