[This is Part III in a four-part series. Links to other parts here: Part I, Part II, Part IV]
The amendments made to the Criminal Procedure Code in 1955 abolished the post of assessors when it came to trials in Sessions Courts, retained the power of state governments to decide whether to grant the right of trial by jury before sessions courts, and also widened the scope for withdrawing the trial by jury in the High Court. Nevertheless, the amendments did not abolish the institution, which continued in various parts of the country. As it would seem, these measures did not eliminate the conversation around juries. By 1958, one year before the Nanavati Trial began, the Law Commission of India unequivocally expressed its views in favour of doing away with trial by jury.
Given the middle path struck by the Government after a painstaking and laborious exercise just three years ago, how did the conversation around abolition restart so quickly? This post tries to explain this, and takes our story right up to the Nanavati Trial which took place in 1959.
New Forums, New Personalities, New Conclusions
From 1950 till 1955, the work on judicial reforms within the central government appears to have been led by the Ministry of Home Affairs. For most of this period, the Ministry was helmed by the same man — KN Katju — and the nature of reforms piloted bore his indelible imprint. This included the preference to retain rather than abolish jury trials. In the middle of that year he was placed in-charge of the Defence Ministry and in his place came G.B. Pant; former premier of the United Provinces, during whose tenure a committee recommended abolition of jury trials in the province.
The Law Commission
For the latter half of the 1950s it appears that the Home Ministry was no longer in the driver's seat. After many years of mulling over the issue, on July 27, 1955, the Union Cabinet met and approved the proposal to set up an All India Law Commission (the other Cabinet proposal discussed that day, incidentally, was renaming Delhi's roads).
The Commission was an all-star cast, lest we forget. It was chaired by the Attorney-General M.C. Setalvad, had sitting and retired Justices of the High Courts, and several senior advocates (some became judges of the Supreme Court later). The first item of the terms of reference for the Committee was to "review the system of judicial administration in all its aspects ..." It harked back to the letter floated by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the memo prepared by KN Katju in 1953, and suggests that everything was still on the table despite the amendments of 1955.
What is interesting here is that at least in the formative documents of the Law Commission, there is no explicit reference to the jury issue. It seems that it asked some states on how the jury trial was working (Bihar, for instance, which sent back a copy of its Jury Committee Report), but it is unclear whether any specific query on abolition was put forth.
We do know, of course, that in Chapter 42 of the 14th Report published in 1958, the Commission dealt with the institution of trial by jury and recommended its abolition. Reading the Report, you get a sense that there were few supporters of the jury within the Commission, which at page 868 states: "Our task is to consider whether this exotic growth transplanted into India by British lawyers and jurists has worked well and should be continued." There is no mention of the demand for jury trials made by nationalist parties during the freedom struggle, and arguments in favour of juries are all seen as "theoretical".
The test to decide whether juries should be retained was whether they worked in practice, and all evidence suggested that they did not. The issue of corrupt jurors received special mention, as well the expenditure in running such kinds of trials. Citing the experiences of Bihar, U.P., and Bombay (more on that below), the Commission concluded that the jury system in India had been a failure and should be abolished rather than remedied.
The Law Ministers' Conference
The Law Commission's creation points to the emergence of a new site of study on issues of law reform in the latter half of the decade. It also appears to have been accompanied by the Law Ministry getting more directly involved with the matter of reforming judicial administration.
As part of this, while the Law Commission was chugging away and preparing its report on the issue of reforms in administration of justice, for the first time in September 1957 a Law Ministers' Conference was convened in New Delhi. Organised by the Law Ministry, the Conference was attended by Law Ministers of all States (accompanied by Secretaries of the respective Law Departments), as well as the Union Home Minister of the day, G.B. Pant.
Much like the Law Commission, the Law Ministers' Conference also does not appear to have jury trials as part of the initial agenda. The only mention appears to have occurred on the second day of the Conference, at the end of a long discussion on corruption in court administration. The Law Minister for West Bengal, S.S. Roy, lamented that the jury system is becoming "worse and worse" with people hanging about court to get engaged as jurors and receiving bribes. The Union Law Minister A.K. Sen, who was also from Bengal, chimed in assent with this view. Law Ministers from Kerala and Punjab remarked that they did not have juries, and finally the Home Minister replied to S.S. Roy, saying that they had "better abolish this system".
No further discussion took place. However, curiously, in the summary of discussions prepared after the Conference, the discussion is recorded rather differently. It is not an offhand exchange between the Home Minister and the West Bengal representatives, but framed as a direct suggestion by the Home Minister to all states: "The Home Minister suggested that the States might consider the possibility of abolishing the system."
The Summary of Conclusions changed things even further. It carried Agenda Item (6) under the heading "Checking of Corruption in the Administrative Machinery of Courts", stating that "The possibility of abolishing the jury system may be considered by the states in which the system is still in vogue."
Just like that, one year before the Law Commission would publish its Report, the jury abolition issue was brought back into the judicial reforms conversation. One wonders whether it led to the specific focus on abolishing jury trials in the Commission's report too.
The Law Ministers' Conference was quite the high-level meeting, so naturally the summary of discussions was circulated to states for their formal opinions and comments by the year end. Going through the responses received throughout 1958, we find that at this juncture, trial by jury was already practically non-existent outside of West Bengal and Bihar. Since abolition of juries seemed to carry full weight of the centre now, even West Bengal and Bihar wrote back saying that the proposal was "under consideration". By 1959, Bihar wrote an additional response to the centre, stating that the Patna High Court judges were also no longer in favour of the jury system.
Nanavati, and Trial by Jury in Bombay
I mentioned West Bengal and Bihar as bastions of jury trials in 1957-58. What about Bombay State? In the previous round of consultations lasting from 1950-54, we saw both Bench and Bar offer a spirited defence of the institution from various parts of the Bombay State, as it was then. By 1958, in no part other than Greater Bombay — the administrative name for the City — were jury trials still in operation across the entire state. How did this happen?
After passage of the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act in 1955, it appears that there was some internal review of the working of sessions trials across the state. The review condemned trial by jury in districts other than Greater Bombay largely because of the poor quality of jurors available. As a result, the Government in consultation with the High Court, withdrew jury trials from all districts other than Greater Bombay with effect from September 3, 1956.
Another review of the sessions trials took place after reorganisation of Bombay State in 1956. To maintain uniformity of procedure, the Government decided (again in consultation with the High Court) to withdraw jury trials from Nagpur and five other newly added districts, with effect from September 2, 1957.
I have not come across contemporary material to discern whether jury trials remained in Greater Bombay because they were a success. If anything, official papers suggest otherwise. After some deliberation and consulting with the High Court, in December 1958 the State of Bombay wrote to the Centre seeking permission to amend the law to abolish jury trials for Greater Bombay. That it came in the aftermath of the Law Ministers' Conference hints that the proposal was not entirely unrelated to the nudge from the centre.
The State Government had not heard back on its letter by the time that Commander Nanavati infamously pulled the trigger on April 27, 1959. A reply came on September 17, while the trial was ongoing, advising the Bombay Government to wait till the proposals of the Law Commission had been finally reviewed. When the jury acquitted Nanavati next week, it did not prompt any fresh reappraisal or reconsideration on abolishing jury trials by the State Government. It waited, just as it had been advised to.
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