AND THE LORD SAID UNTO— 31
Zemindary Courts do at the present time. Those Courts are exclusive, as to the complaints, suits and actions against natives not in the employment or service of the Company, or of a British subject, and not brought before the Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery. On the 17th of January a return was made to a habeas corpus which had been granted to a person of the name of Golum Hider, to produce Sum ju, a female infant of eleven years of age, stating that the child was voluntarily under his care, and not underrestraint. On the 19th of January of the same year a writ was issued to Jona Mullick, keeper of the prison of the Dewanee Adawlut in Calcutta, to bring up the body of Banchuram Roy. That writ was objected to by counsel on Saturday the 21st of January, inasmuch as it issued on the statute of Cha. II., and was not marked per statum. It was answered by the Chief Justice that the writ might be considered as at common law. A motion then was made for quashing the writ, because the common law of England did not extend to India, or at least to no other than British subject: but this motion was rejected by the court; for on January the 31st a return was made to the writ, and the doctrine was by consequence denied. But when, on the 2nd of March in the same year, the return was read again, stating the imprisonment to be in a civil suit for debt, by order of the Court of Dewanee Adawlut, the Supreme Court at Calcutta proceeded to inquire whether that court, which undoubtedly possessed a competent jurisdiction in many cases, possessed in it that which was then under discusson. The plaintiff was a British subject, and the defendant his gomastah or steward, and therefore in the employment of a British subject; both parties were amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, and neither of them within that of the Dewanee Adawlut. The keeper of the prison being in court to make his return, the prisoner was discharged. The Supreme Court thus exercised its authority in determining that the return did not bring the prisoner within the jurisdiction of the inferior court.
Again, on the 28th of March 1775, a return was made by Jona Mullick, keeper of the gaol of Fousdary Adawlut, to habeas corpus, to bring up the body of one Seremani there confined. On the 23rd of December in the same year a writ of habeas corpus, directed to Warren Hastings, esquire, the Governor-General, to bring up the body of Joseph Pavessi, was returned in court, the return being