The Calcutta Weekly Notes November 25 1946

If we are reverting to the subject of the decision of the Spens Commission to hold the Calcutta Disturbances inquiry in camera it is because we feel that the legal aspects of the decision call for futher comment and also because various rumours have already spread as to what the witnesses before the Commission are saying or keeping unsaid. [...] In his speech in the House of Lords in the same case the then Lord Chancellor Viscount Haldane stated the law thus :- But unless it be strictly necessary for the attainment of justice there can be no power in the Court to hear in camera either a matrimonial cause or any other where there is contest between parties The ix xii 9x THE CALCUTTA WEEKLY NOTES. [...] The explanation which renders the presumption unavailable to the prosecution is an explanation how articles belonging to the complainant are found in the possession of the accused shortly after they had been stolen from the possession of the complainant. [...] The essence of the presumption is that when the essential facts relating to the ownership theft and possession of the articles have been proved the Court may infer that the accused knew how they had been removed from the possession of the owner. [...] The position is that when the necessary facts have been established from which the presumption may be drawn the presumtion that should be drawn is that the acused knew of the manner in which the articles in question have been taken away from the possession of the owner ; that is to say in a case of ordinary theft that they have been stolen and in a case of dacoity that they had been stole