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Golab Bano case : Extracts from The Methods of the Indian Police in the 20th Century (1910) by Justice Frederic Mackarness, M.A. (Oxford), Barrister at Law, Ex-MP, County Court Judge, London Circuit, 50 Sussex, since 1911:― “But I must mention one other case in the Punjab, in which the alleged torture was of a more atrocious kind, & the conduct of the Executive of the most unsatisfactory character…. The Chief Court: A woman named Gulāb Bāno was convicted early in 1908, upon her own confession, of poisoning her husband, & sentenced by Mr Kennedy, the Sessions Judge, with illicit concurrence of three Indian assessors, to be hanged. She appealed to the Chief Court at Lahore, consisting of Mr Justice Robertson & Mr Justice Rattigan, who in December of that year, set aside the conviction on the ground that the confession was most probably extorted by outrage of the most horrible kind inflicted on the woman by the Police. The Judges exhorted the Executive in earnest language to ‘institute a most stark Judicial Inquiry’ into the conduct of the police. Nevertheless, for nine months the world heard nothing, & the police continued in the service of the Govt. At the end of that time appeared a ‘Resolution’ by the Govt. of the Punjab completely discrediting the views, both of the Judges & of the prison doctor, who examined the woman, & completely exonerating the police. The ‘Resolution’ purports to be the result of a secret enquiry. But no one knows by whom it was held, except that it was by the police. No one knows who was examined, except that none of the police implicated were cross-examined…. Parliament has received little information on the subject. ― The Alleged Torture: Here is the horrible story of what the police did to the woman, in the very words of the Official ‘Resolution’: On the evening of June 7th she complained to the matron of the jail that the police had maltreated her. The hospital attendant was summoned, & to him Gulāb Bāno (the woman) made a statement to the following effect: ‘I was hung to the roof by the police (Superintendent & two head constables) in my village during the investigation, with a rope in my legs, & a baton smeared with green chillies was thrust up my anal opening.’ The matter was reported the next day to the Civil Surgeon, who examined the woman & found that she was suffering from fever, & was in a weak state. He ordered her to be prepared for examination, & next morning examined her, & found her, to use his own words, ‘terribly inflamed & ulcerated, a condition which, in my opinion, could only have been caused by an assault similar to that described by the prisoner’

He subsequently added that ‘the assault might have been committed on or about May 12th (the date given by the woman), but more probably about June 2nd.’ …. To the District Judge the woman gave a ‘Very clear & detailed account” of how the police had first beat & kicked her with the object of making her confess, then tied a rope round her feet & suspended her from a rafter of the roof. Then (so the official account runs) ‘a police baton, smeared with red peppers, was thrust into her rectum.’ She described minutely how the red pepper was ground, mixed with water, & applied to the baton, & what part each of the police concerned took in the proceedings. Under this agony she confessed to having poisoned her husband…. She retracted the confession on June 7th, first to the matron of the jail & then to the hospital assistant & the civil surgeon, & on the 10th formally before the district magistrate. Nevertheless, she was committed by him for trial, & convicted & sentenced to be hanged by the Sessions Judge. How could this possibly come about? ― Death of the Woman: The acquittal of, & the order for, the discharge of the woman dated from December 12th, 1908. Then comes a deplorable & impressive fact. The poor woman ‘died of fever on January 10th at the village of Ganda Kass, Police Station Pindi Gheb,’ to quote the official account. But the extraordinary thing is that though she died within a few weeks of the delivery of the Chief Court’s judgment, yet no one in India, or here [London], seems to have been made acquainted with the fact of her death until about October, 1909. During the intervening nine months the Govt. ‘enquiry’ went slowly & silently on. Frequent questions were asked in Parliament with no result…. At last came an elaborate decision by the Lieutenant-Governor to the effect that the police were entirely innocent. But not one word was said to convey to the world that the most important witness, namely, the poor woman herself, had not been examined, & had been dead for nine months. Was there any enquiry as to how her fever was caused, any medical report, or any inquest? ― Judges’ Reply to the Executive: As soon as the Govt. decision appeared the Judges took the almost unprecedented course of saying that they would formally reply to it in open court. Accordingly, on November 20th, 1909, at Lahore, they read a long & carefully prepared ‘order’ recapitulating in full detail the grounds on which they had made the grave reflections upon the police. They again asserted that they did not in any way prejudice the case against the police, but that their suspicions still remained. They laid stress upon the fact that for three or four days the poor woman was taken by the police away from the jail without any warrant, & ‘was returned to jail in a deplorable condition

’ At the end of this ‘order’ they announced that they proposed to append to their original judgment, the following ‘rider: No enquiry, such as was suggested by us as desirable in our judgment of December 12th, 1908, into the conduct of the police in regard to this case has been made by the Executive Authorities, but his Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, has called for a memorandum from the Superintendent of Police concerned, & has considered that & the following note of the Deputy Inspector-General, & the medical opinion by Colonel Cunningham, & the papers submitted to him; & after considering these papers & those of the incomplete enquiry made before the trial, [the Lt-Governor] has come to the conclusion that the injuries from which Gulāb Bāno was suffering on June 5th were not caused by the police, & also that the omission to call Head Constable Abdulla as a witness was not due to any intention to suppress evidence favourable to the accused. The Judges had found that this Head Constable could have given evidence of the utmost importance in favour of the woman, but was not put into the box by the police. ― How the Police Were Exonerated: What is the salient fact that emerges from this unique judicial pronouncement? That in spite of the earnest warning of the Judges in December, 1908, that the evidence against the police of what can only he described as fiendish cruelty was prima facie such as to call for searching enquiry by the Executive, no such enquiry at all has ever been held, hut that the Police have been completely white-washed, simply on the strength of a secret memoranda by the superior officers of the very men directly affected by the strictures of the Judges. Nay, more. Not only as to the truth of the allegations of torture made against the Police, but as to the value & relevancy of evidence to be called, the Lieutenant-Governor & his policemen openly set aside the opinion of the highest court in the province. Still worse: the clear evidence of the experienced prison doctor who examined the poor woman, & found her injuries to be exactly in accordance with her story, is discarded by the Governor in favour of a theoretical opinion given more than a year afterwards by a medical professor in Lahore. And it is with this that Parliament & the public are expected to be satisfied…. As for the Judges, the Executive thus deals with them: ‘If your lordships find yourselves unable to concur in his decision, the Lieutenant-Governor regrets that it should be so, but so far as the Govt. is concerned, the decision is a final one, & as such has been communicated to the Head of the Police.’ Such is the respect shown by the Executive in India for the highest court in the Province. [Extracts from a booklet by Hindustan Gadar Office, San Francisco, 1915, Pages 16-21, which reproduced The Methods of the Indian Police…. in full]