Past experience counts
THERE is one argument against repression by means of executive measures which its advocates discreetly ignore, because it is impossible for them to answer it. That argument is that past experience conclusively shows that the evidence on which the government, often if not generally, relies in such cases is far from reliable. This argument had again and again been adduced both in the press and by public men. It was urged with great force during Wednesday’s debate. If gentlemen like Babus Aswini Kumar Dutt and Krishnakumar Mitter could be arrested and kept in jail for reasons which the public had not yet been convinced were either adequate or satisfactory, said Bipin Chandra Pal, how were they to believe that there were better or more adequate reasons for the arrest of the detenues in the present case? Pal then cited another case which was even more conclusive because it was found in a court of law that the evidence on which the government had relied was worthless. Everyone knew, he said, that in the Kona murder case, the police had brought forward a witness who confessed to having driven a motor car from the place of occurrence to a village, but who when asked to actually drive a car failed even to handle it. Pal might have cited a score of instances of the latter kind where he cited only one. He might have reminded the House of the Barah dacoity case, in which the Chief Justice found that “improper influences” had been at work and “the evidence was tainted with that deplorable interference which enormously increases the difficulties of courts of justice”.
