The End of Trial by Jury in India — Part IV: Looking Back at a Tumultuous Decade

[This is Part IV in a four-part series. The previous post can be accessed here]

We saw in the previous post that the proposal for abolition of provisions on juries mooted by the Bombay Government was kept pending by the Centre in September 1959, on grounds that the Law Commission's findings on the jury issue were yet to be fully considered. 

Such consideration, though, was already underway by this time. A second iteration of the Law Ministers' Conference was being proposed for some time since June 1959, at which the Law Commission Report was to form a key prong of discussions. While that Conference kept getting deferred, the Report was discussed on the floor of the Rajya Sabha in November 1959. The lengthy discussion only marginally featured the recommendation on juries. Only two speakers said anything; one seeing it as a slur on national character, while the other content with the recommendation. 

The latter, J.S. Bisht, found clear vindication of the stand in a recently concluded trial: "We recently saw what happened in the Nanavati case. It is sub judice, I am not referring to it. The verdict of the jury is there, I am not commenting on it, and the Judge has referred the case to the High Court on the ground that the verdict is perverse. It proves that. There it is amply before you, and therefore I submit, Sir, that it is high time that we abolished that system." (from the uncorrected debates of November 24).

This was not all. The deferred Law Ministers' Conference was finally held in Srinagar at the end of June, 1960. Trial by jury was again on the agenda (Item No. 13), and discussed in the Committee briefly (though for longer than in 1957). The meeting took stock of the status across states and ultimately concluded that while many states had already taken steps to abolish jury trials, the others "may examine the position and come to their own decision ...". In this brief discussion, the Bombay Law Minister, Shantilal H. Shah, could not stop from making a reference to the Nanavati case as well: "Recently there was a trial by jury of a member belonging to the Defence Services and the Judge called their decision perverse. (Laughter)."

Laughter and vindication. That is what the Nanavati case actually meant for the question of trial by jury by 1960, giving laughter and vindication to the large contingent of experts who had decried the retention of this foreign transplant. 

I would call it a question and not a debate because the writing was very much on the wall by this point. Even before the time Nanavati's case began, the only real question was when juries would go, not if; and it was still a question only because the Home Ministry was reluctant to endorse abolition since it was only in 1955 that it had sponsored reforms for making it work better. As the criminal procedure reforms continued in the next decade, it came as a surprise to nobody that a new proposed code had no place for trials by jury. 

Looking at the discussion as it progressed over the decade though these posts teases at the growing inevitability about the outcome. Paradoxically, a key prong for retaining juries in 1955 was the fact that they could, practically, be rendered redundant if state governments so desired. It would seem that this quixotic logic was at play even in areas which, on the face of it, showed a continued enthusiasm for juries. Thus, in West Bengal, the State Government had withdrawn jury trials in many important kinds of cases over the decade. It was done by designating special courts, assigning the cases to them, and prescribing that trials before special courts would follow the 'warrant' procedure which meant no jury was involved.  

The Law Ministers' Conference, the Law Commission, various State-Level Committees and Legislatures, and of course, Parliament; the question of what must be done with trial by jury was extensively discussed across multiple sites. The nature of the sites framed the conversation a certain way. It privileged the view of the expert—the bureaucrat, lawyer, or judge. 

Looking at it critically today, one wonders whether this presaged the outcome to a certain extent, given the overwhelming opinion of these experts was to distrust any involvement of the layperson in what was seen as a specialist discipline demanding exclusivity and expertise. Were they being unfair in casting the layperson as entirely unable to comprehend what transpired in court? KN Katju certainly thought so, being of the firm opinion that most cases were straightforward enough and an inability to simplify facts pointed to failings in the lawyers and judges rather than jurymen.   

Voices within the establishment for retention of jury trials were very much exceptional from the point at which the question first came under scrutiny. One can only wonder how many voices outside of the circle of expert opinions held other opinions. Remember, this was the first decade of independence. As Rohit De and Ornit Shani's works have shown, members of the public were by no means strangers to the additional burdens of citizenship and desired to be participants in nation-building. 

Thus, was it really as the Bombay Government stated it in December 1958, that the public was not keen on discharging jury duty? Or was it another case of a government overstating its case to retain control of state affairs and keep citizens distant and controlled? Perhaps there is an archive out there that helps to see this side of the story around jury abolition.