Trial of Raja Nandakumar (1775)

It is introduced as a case concerning the conflict of jurisdiction between the Supreme Council and the Supreme Court, and that is how it should be answered. The other four cases show the court asserting authority against the executive. This one shows the court and the Governor-General acting together against a man who had succeeded against the Governor-General before the Council — a judicial killing, on the criticisms the course sets out.

It is therefore the case for the proposition that the defects of the Regulating Act settlement were not only jurisdictional but structural: a court applying a criminal law that had never been promulgated in Calcutta, presided over by a close friend of the man the accused had denounced.

Maharaja Nandakumar, a Hindu, brought charges of bribery and corruption against Warren Hastings before the Supreme Council. The Council found Hastings guilty; the Raja won.

In retaliation, Hastings — with the co-operation of Chief Justice Impey — had a criminal case lodged through one Mohan Prasad. An acknowledgment of debt in the name of a banker, Balkidas, was alleged to have been forged by Nandakumar six years earlier, with Rs 25,000 appropriated. Nandakumar was arrested for forgery.

A majority of the Supreme Council pleaded for his release; the Supreme Court refused. The trial was a jury trial of twelve Europeans. A verdict of guilty was returned and Nandakumar was sentenced to death under the British Parliament Act of 1728. He was executed.

The Supreme Court convicted the accused of forgery and sentenced him to death under the English statute of 1728, refusing both the Council's plea for his release and, afterwards, leave to appeal to the King-in-Council.

There is no reasoning of the court to reproduce. What the paper requires instead is the critique — made by Lord Macaulay, Mill and others — and it is best given as seven numbered grounds:

1. Nandakumar was not a resident of Calcutta, so the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over him.
2. The Bench contained two sitting Magistrates, which affected the fairness of the trial.
3. The Supreme Court was established in 1774 and the alleged forgery was of 1770 — an ex post facto application of its jurisdiction.
4. Chief Justice Impey, a close friend of Warren Hastings, presided.
5. Forgery was not a capital crime in Hindu law, and the English law of 1728 imposing the death penalty for forgery had not been promulgated in Calcutta.
6. Nandakumar's application for leave to appeal to the King-in-Council was unjustly turned down.
7. His case was not referred for mercy.

The fifth is the strongest — punishment under an unpublished foreign statute — and an answer that has room for only one ground should take that one.

Two cautions on the grounds. Grounds 3 and 4 are sometimes both labelled ex post facto; ground 4 is plainly a complaint of bias, not of retrospectivity, and should be stated as bias. And Lord Macaulay's verdict should be given as what it is — an opinion on motive: he observed that Impey acted unjustly in refusing to respite Nandakumar, and thought that no rational man could doubt that Impey took that course in order to gratify the Governor-General.

Use it on any question about the working of the Supreme Court at Calcutta and on the defects of the Regulating Act 1773. It carries two of those defects at once: the court followed its own criminal procedure, under which many offences were punishable with death although that law had never been promulgated, and it had no jurisdiction to hear an indictment of the Governor-General — so the Council was the only forum for Nandakumar's charges, and the court was available for the reply.

Use it on judicial independence in Module III as the negative example. Every device now used to secure independence — security of tenure, a bar on bias, a right of appeal, a clear promulgated criminal law — corresponds to one of the seven criticisms.

What it does not decide: it decides no question of jurisdiction. The Council's view and the court's view were never reconciled; the executive simply had the trial it wanted. The jurisdictional questions were settled by the Act of Settlement 1781, not here.