Bideshi Mian and Others vs Emperor

Scroope, J.—The facts of the case out of which this application arises are these: By Notification 1014, dated 12th June 1931, issued u/s 3, Criminal Tribes Act (6 of 1924), the Governor-in-Council declared that a gang of forty persons, whose names were given in the notification, were a criminal tribe for the purposes of the said Act. The notification runs as follows:

Whereas the Governor-in-Council has reason to believe that the persons named in the list hereto appended are members of a gang commonly known as Hari Singh''s gang, and that the said gang is addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences therefore the Governor-in-Council, in exercise of the powers conferred on him by Section 3, Criminal Tribes Act (6 of 1924), hereby declares the said gang to be a criminal tribe for the purposes of the said Act.

Then follows a list of forty persons and the names of these five petitioners appear in the list. On 17th July last they were called on by the Superintendent of Police at Dhanbad to present themselves at Gobindpur thana to have their thumb-impressions taken. This was done, and their names were entered in the register which is maintained u/s 4 of the Act. They then applied to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhanbad u/s 8 of the Act, asking to have their names removed from the register, on the ground that they have been registered without any justification; but the Deputy Commissioner, after calling for a police report, declined to accede to their prayer. They have now come to this Court in its revisional jurisdiction, and it is contended for them that their names were wrongly entered as members of a criminal tribe, that they have never committed any non-bailable offence and that they are all men with cultivation and other honest means of subsistence and in fact not the kind of persons to whom the Criminal Tribes Act applies at all.

It is contended on the other hand by the learned Government Advocate that this Court has no jurisdiction to investigate whether the order directing their registration under this Act was justifiable, and in my opinion Sir Sultan Ahmad''s contention is well-founded. The question is concluded by a decision of the Calcutta High Court in Hasan Ali Bepari v. Emperor [1920] 47 Cal. 843. There it was held that a District Magistrate in refusing to direct removal of the names of certain persons from a register maintained under the Criminal Tribes Act was acting as an executive officer, and did not perform a judicial function and that the High Court had no authority to interfere.

With the view expressed there, I entirely agree and the case relied on by the learned advocate for the petitioners, viz.: Atchayya v. Gangayya [1892] 15 Mad. 138, relates to an entirely different matter, namely the question whether a Registrar acting under the Registration Act is a Court for the purposes of Criminal Procedure Code. Assuming for the sake of argument that we set aside the order of the District Magistrate and direct the removal of the persons from the register, then it will follow that the gazette notifications which contain these persons'' name will have to be modified and we shall be in effect holding that they were wrongly included in the Government orders; but that is to call into question the validity of the notification and that is what Section 29 in effect says:

No Court shall question the validity of any notification issued u/s 3, Section 11, or Section 12, on the ground that the provisions here in before contained or any of them have not been complied with, or shall entertain in any form whatever the question whether they have been complied with; but every such notification shall be conclusive proof that it has been issued in accordance with law.

It might conceivably be argued that Section 29 only refers to cases where it is sought to challenge the notification on the ground that there has been no previous publication, or no previous notice to the persons affected thereby; but all that is necessary for the application of Section 30 is that the Local Government should have reason to believe that the tribe, gang or class is addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences; so Section 29 can only mean that no Court can enter into the question in any form whatsoever as to whether in fact the application of Section 8 was justifiable. The matter is one entirely within the discretion of the Local Government. In any view of the case therefore the application must fail and is accordingly dismissed.