40 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Bombay. In that case, although a writ of habeas corpus issued, the body was not brought into court, nor any return made to the writ, though a strange, anomalous, questionable document, came from the person to whom it had been sent. The fact stated in that document, if true, might have been returned to the court, and the cause, if sufficient, would have been admitted by the court. If appeared too on the proceedings that the person to whom the writ was directed had obtained the authority of Mr. Dunlop, a Justice of Peace of that part of the world, to keep Moro Ragonath in custody, and we apprehend may well be considered as an agent employed by Mr. Dunlop, and thus answering the narrowest description of those within the jurisdiction.
It is a much less daring presumption than the fiction in the law, that any person brought before the Court of Common Pleas by habeas corpus is a privileged person; and therefore Lord Eldon and Mr. Justice Blackstone commend the Common Pleas for presuming the party arrested to have their privilege when they knew he had not, because the law cannot endure that a man under unjust imprisonment shall return to it.
It can hardly ever indeed happen that a person in the Indian territory should be imprisoned without the intervention of English subjects properly so called.
The gaoler, in almost every case, is a native; all the officers of the native courts are natives; but the authority of the native courts is almost always under the control of English subjects. Servants of the East India Company preside over their jurisdictions. It would require a great deal of ingenuity, and a most remarkable concurrence of circumstances to find any person imprisoning another, and not acting under the employment of British subjects.
The letter-missive to the Supreme Court (1 Knapp, 4) assumes to repeal the letters patent granted by the King in respect of all except those residing within the island of Bombay, or such as have been employed by the British authorities; it claims to refuse the execution of writs directed to any officer of the Provincial Courts; and in conformity with this assumption of power by the government were its proceedings in the case of Bappoo Gunness
(1 Knapp, 6).
The Counsel then proceeding to comment on the terms of the letter of the Governor and Council to the Judges.