The three Appellate Judges of the Calcutta High Court, after
a trial lasting forty-two days, have completely exonerated the defendants in the _Midnapur appeal case. The facts of the case are, briefly, as follows : In 1908 two native police officers of Midnapur, both men with excellent records, arrested two native residents, father and son, in whose house they had discovered a bomb. The father was released, but the son, who had made a confession implicating a large number of persons in an alleged conspiracy, was sentenced to a long term of transportation under the Explosives Act. On appeal, how- ever, the Calcutta High Court found that the confession. on which the conviction rested was not voluntary, and in November 1909 Peary Mohun Doss, the father, brought an action in the local Court against Mr. Weston, I.C.S., District Magistrate of Midnapur, and the two police officers to recover damages for malicious prosecution and conspiracy. In June 1910 the suit was transferred from the Midnapur Court to the High Court of Calcutta by Mr. Justice Fletcher, who himself tried the case, which lasted for eleven months. the Court having eat on 192 days. In the issue Mr. Justice Fletcher, though finding that Peary's main charge—that the police had placed the bomb in his house, and that Mr. Weston was privy to the act—was not proven, fined each of the de- fendants £66, with costs. The Judges in the Appeal Court have now not only completely exonerated Mr. Weston and the police officers, with costs said to amount to 220,000, but have severely censured Mr. Justice Fletcher and the Counsel for the prosecution. A searching inquiry into the composition and methods of the Calcutta High Court will, it is to be hoped, follow this tardy rectification of a gross miscarriage of justice.
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