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so complete as to enable us explicitly, and in so many words, to exclude the doctrines and practice of English law as in force in the presidency towns. It is above all things owing to the mass of indeterminate law and practice thus introduced that we are unable to form any clear idea of what the procedure in Calcutta really is. Whatever the procedure may be, it should be set out in a complete shape in the Statute Book, and no reference to other laws should be necessary or allowable.

The Coroner and the Coroner's office, and the mode of inquiry into unnatural and sudden deaths, the procedure not only of Police Magistrates, but of Justices of the Peace, supervision of the Magistrates' proceedings, and many other points not yet properly considered, will have to be dealt with in such a Bill as is proposed.

CRIMINAL STATISTICS.

The returns of the past year have only still further confirmed the truth of what the Lieutenant-Governor stated at page 94 of last year's report, as to the urgent need of a more active superintendence of the working of the subordinate courts. From the quarterly and annual statements submitted to Government, it appears clear that extreme differences of practice prevail in different districts, not only as to the classification and treatment of cases, but in such matters as the keeping of registers of attendance of witnesses, reception of complaints, and so on. The returns of the Magistrates and those of the Police Department as submitted to Government have now been assimilated; but it is not always possible to reconcile these with those submitted by Sessions Judges to the High Court. It is not at present the province of Government to rectify anomalies in the judicial returns when they come to light, but as far as possible attention has been drawn to them.

In the absence of the High Court report, we have only the criminal statements drawn up by the Court to High Court-Original side. furnish matter for comment.

At the Sessions on the original side of the High Court 204 persons were dealt with, 8 were discharged without trial, 58 acquitted, and 138 convicted. Other details will be found in the Appendix.

Courts of the interior.
Convictions and acquittals.

In the Sessions Courts of the interior 4,559 persons were dealt with, of whom 31 were discharged, 1,455 acquitted, and 2,535 convicted. The Magistrates of all grades had before them 166,972 persons, as against 155,504 in 1871. Of these 37,397 were discharged without formal trial, 34,062 were finally acquitted, 86,802 were convicted, and 4,084 were committed; 533 died, escaped, or were transferred.

Seventy-eight persons were executed, 275 transported for life, 49 transported for a term of years, 25,871 were sentenced to penal servitude or

Punishments.

rigorous imprisonment, 3,342 were whipped, 57,163 fined. In 447 cases tried by jury in the interior, the Judge expressed his dissent from the finding of the Jury trials. jury in 48. In 1,289 cases tried with assessors, the Judge dissented in 163..

District Magistrates heard 3,727 appeals from their subordinates.

Appeals.

Of these they rejected 568, confirmed the sentence in 1,996, modified it in 343, and reversed it in 612. The Sessions Courts had 9,901 appeals, of which they rejected 1,406, confirmed sentence in 5,544, modified it in 766, reversed it in 1,498. The High Court had 1,891 appeals, upheld the sentences in 1,423, modified them in 97, and reversed them in 137. There were 469 applications for revision, in 247 of which the lower courts' judgment was upheld, in 26 modified, and in 190 reversed.

Results under principal headings of crime in High Court Statements.

On the whole it may be said that, looking to the population of Bengal, there is not a large proportion of violent or heinous crime. Crime so far as it is cognizable by the Police is more conveniently reviewed under the head of Folice. But the following salient points in the judicial statements may be briefly touched on here. Rioting and unlawful assembly and affrays contributed 3,618 out of the total number of cases reported; 10,934 persons were tried for this offence, of whom 7,003 were convicted. False evidence, though common enough in the courts, is seldom prosecuted, and is difficult to bring home. In 650 cases 904 persons were tried and 279 were convicted. There were 830 murders and culpable homicides, and attempts at those crimes, for which 1,715 persons were apprehended; of these 552 were convicted. Thuggee is absent. Petty assaults swell up to 44,174 cases, acquittals being far ahead of convictions (18,761 to 12,949). In some districts, especially in Eastern Bengal, assault is by far the most common form of charge. The cases are said to be often false, and brought into court only as a means of harassing a neighbour; many such cases after being brought are compromised or withdrawn. Under kidnapping 343 cases are shown, but of 471 persons tried, only 110 were convicted. Thefts gave a total of 27,875 cases, but only 21,720 persons were put on trial, and 10,307 convicted for this offence; very many cases are undetected. Dacoity shows 426 cases, in which 1,885 persons were tried and 509 convicted; but many of these are only technically called dacoity. Dacoities of the old style comparatively seldom occur. Criminal trespass in the form of house-breaking gives 11,293 cases, in which only 2,015 persons were convicted out of 3,695 put on trial. This offence is always ineffectually dealt with, and is peculiar to Behar as assault to Eastern Bengal. Offences against marriage were 3,613;-2,025 persons were put on trial, but only 283 convicted. These cases chiefly occur in the Eastern and Mahomedan districts, where the nika system of marriage tends to multiply offences of the class, while the absence of any general registry of marriages and divorces prevents proof being got of the facts necessary to support cases in court. A new law for regulating Mahommedan marriages is under consideration. For defamation 570 persons were put on trial, and of these only 132 were convicted. 28,798 of the offences of this year were under local and special Acts. Taking Penal Code cases only there were 148,904 cases in all, in which 131,565 persons were put on trial, of whom 64,506 were acquitted or discharged, and 62,406 convicted.

The statement below gives the misdemeanours not cognizable by the Police instituted in the Magistrates' Courts Non-cognizable crime. of each district, the cases of a similar character taken up by Magistrates of their own motion, &c., with the percentage of convictions to persons against whom process issued and number of persons convicted to population :

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There has been some

Reason for increase in cases not cognizable by the Police.

increase in petty cases in the year under report, and the reasons given for the increase in the institution of such cases are that many now come before the courts which were formerly settled in the villages or by landholders and others. It is further attributed partly to reduction of charges under the Stamp Act, and partly to the action of the lower classes of native attorneys, who, having lost a great portion of their practice since the transfer of rent-suits to the civil courts, devote their energies to the getting up of quarrels. Exceptional general prosperity and growing independence of the lower classes is assigned in some districts as a cause of increase. Injuries, especially attempts at extortion or illegal restraint, are resented and brought into court more readily than heretofore. No doubt also many really civil injuries are brought into the criminal court in an exaggerated shape, and tend to swell the list and disturb also the proportion of convictions to acquittals.

The following statement shows how the criminal work is distributed among the different districts, and represents the whole amount of crime

Distribution of criminal work.

in Bengal that actually came before the courts, including municipal and all other cases:

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From the Jail Report the following judicial statistics have been for the most part extracted :The number of convictions

Number of convictions.

involving imprisonment in each district in 1872, and the proportion of convictions of all sorts to the population of

the district as given in the late census return, are shown below :—

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