ORIGINAL JURISDICTION :These were two sets of petitions by three groups of

persons, one under Art. 32 of the Consti- tution (Petitions Nos. 12, 13 and 14, of 1951)
and the other under Art. 136(1) of the Constitution (Criminal Miscellane- ous
Petitions Nos. 14, 15 and 16) against the judgment and order dated 19th December,
1950, of the High Court of Judi- cature at Hyderabad (M. Khaliluzzaman Siddiqi J.)
in Miscel-. laneous Petitions Nos. 2297, 2298 and 2299 of 1950. The facts are set out
in detail in the judgment.
D.N. Pritt (Danial Latifi and Gopal Singh, with him) for the petitioners.
M.C. Setalvad, Attorney-General for India, and Rajaram Aiyar, Advocate-General of
Hyderabad, (G .N. Joshi, with them) for the respondents.
1951. March 16. The judgment of the Court was delivered by FAZL ALI J.--These are
six petitions which have been presented to this Court on behalf of three groups of
persons in the following circumstances.
On the 30th October, 1948, the Military Governor of Hyderabad by virtue of the
powers delegated to him by H.E.H. the Nizam enacted the Special Tribunals
Regulation (No. 5 of 1358 F), which was amended by several later Regu- lations
issued on the 22nd May, 1949, 10th July, 1949, 23rd July and 30th October, 1949.
The Regulation provided among other things that the Military Governor may
constitute a Special Tribunal or Tribunals, each consisting of three members
appointed by him, and that he may by general or special order direct that these
Tribunals shall try any offence, whether committed before or after the
commencement of the Regulation, or any class of offences. Section 8 of the
Regulation empowered the Military Governor to direct, by order, that in such
circumstances and under such conditions, if any, as may be specified in the direction,
any power or duty conferred or imposed upon him by the Regulation may be
exercised or discharged by any other authority. In accord- ance with the Regulation,
certain Tribunals were constitut- ed, and one of the Tribunals--Tribunal A for
Nalgonda dis- trict--proceeded to try certain cases made over to it by the Civil
Administrator of Nalgonda under the powers vested in him by the Military Governor.
Among the cases tried by this Tribunal were also three cases in which the petitioners
were concerned, these being registered as Criminal Cases Nos. 14, 17 and 18 of 1949.
These cases were based on three charge sheets submitted by one Mr.
HanumanthaNaidu, a senior police officer of Nalgonda district, one of which was No.
14 dated the 7th April, 1949, and' the other two were Nos. 14 and 15 dated the 20th
July, 1949. In these charge sheets, the accused were generally referred to as

"Communists wedded to the policy of overthrowing the Govern- ment by violence

and setting up in its place Communist Raj," and the specific cases made out against
them were briefly as follows. In the first case (Criminal Case No. 14 of 1949), the
chargesheet stated that the accused went to a certain village in Nalgonda district on
21st September, 1948 "in khaki uniform and holding unnotified firearms," caught
hold of four persons as they had not paid the full subscrip- tion demanded of them,
decoyed them to the outskirts of the village and then "killed them by cutting their
throats." In the second case (Criminal Case No. 17), it was stated that on the 6th
April, 1949, at about 9 A.M. two of the accused came to a certain village and began to
fire their guns, but when "the public" approached them asking them to surrender
they ran away and joined the other persons accused in the case. Later on, all the
accused "marched on the villagers" and opened fire at them indiscriminately with the
result that one of them received an injury in his right high which subsequently
proved fatal, and another received a minor injury on his left hand. The version given
at the trial in this case was slightly different and shows that the two accused who had
visited the village were chased by 50 or 100 persons to a place called
Madireddychelka where the other accused joined them, and after parleying with the
chasers, accused No. 4 fired and hit one of the villagers on the thigh and the latter
died. Thereupon the accused chased the remaining villagers, firing their guns, and
one of the bullets grazed the middle finger of one of the villagers and caused a slight
injury to it. In the third case (Criminal Case No. 18), the facts were stated to be
these:--On the 15th May, at about midnight, the accused visited Kasthala village,
carrying firearms and dressed in khaki uniform. They got upon the terrace of one
Kankayya where one Natala Rama Reddy was sleeping, caught hold of him and took
him forcibly to the outskirt's of the village in spite of the protests of a number of
villagers who had followed, and "killed him by firing gunshots at him.