JUDGMENT

Markby, J. - Two persons, Burah and Book Singh, have been convicted on a charge of murder by the Deputy Commissioner of the Cossyah and Jynteeah Hills and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life by the Chief Commissioner of Assam on the 23rd April 1876.

2. On the 9th July, 1870 the officer, in charge of the Kamrup jail forwarded to this Court petitions of appeal from these prisoners, unaccompanied by copies of the judgment.

3. The first question which arises in the case is, whether the High Court has any power to entertain these applications; and this question is one of so much importance that it has been referred to a Full Bench, and has been on two occasions very fully argued.

4. The Cossyah and Jynteeah Kills comprise a considerable tract of country on the eastern frontier of Bengal, and they contain a population which, in 1862, was estimated at 120,000. The Jynteeah Hills were formerly under the independent Rajah of Jynteeah. The Cossyah Hills were divided into a number of smaller districts under different rulers. Of the twenty-five Cossyah states, five used commonly to be called "semi-independent," and the remaining twenty "dependent." It is not very clear how this division was arrived at, and it probably has never been accurately ascertained what part of the Cossyah Hills is, and what is not, British territory. But by far the greater portion has long been subject to our Government, and is therefore (21 & 22 Vict., c. 106, Section 1) included in British India.

5. Prior to 1854, there was a Political Agent of the Cossyah Hills, who exercised the usual powers of a Political Agent with regard to so much of the territory as was under chiefs who wore treated as independent; but he also held general powers for the administration of justice in those portions of the territory which had ceased to be independent. Probably, in practice, the difference was of no very great importance, the chiefs being all too insignificant to assert any independent authority. This officer was in command of the Sylhet Light Infantry, and he acted also as the Political Agent in respect of Jynteeah, which, up to tins period of the Burmese War in 1824, was independent. During that war the Jynteeah territory was taken, under the protection of the British, and the Rajah acknowledged his allegiance. In 1835 the reigning Rajah was deposed for an act of cruelty and his territory was annexed. From the date of this annexation the Political Agent of the Cossyah Hills seems to have exercised the same functions with regard to Jynteeah, as he had hitherto exercised in respect of the annexed portions of the Cossyah Hills. But he still continued to boar the somewhat inappropriate designation of Political Agent of the Cossyah Hills.

6. In the year 1835, an Act was passed (Act VI of 1835), by which the functionaries in political charge of the "Cossyah Hills" were placed under the control and superintendence, in criminal matters, of the Court of Nizamut Adawlut. From the records of this Court it appears that, on the 16th June, 1835, the Court informed the Government of Bengal that the Political Agent of the Cossyah Hills had submitted returns of criminal business for Jynteeah also. The Government replied that the Jynteeah territory was taken possession of on the 15th of March, whilst the Act was passed on the 13th, and that if the Court thought that this did not constitute any objection to their doing so, the Government saw no objection to the Court exercising jurisdiction in Jynteeah, which was accordingly authorized. The Court replied accepting the jurisdiction in Jynteeah from the date of the Act. The arrangement of the duties of the Political Agent of the Cossyah Hills remained as above stated until 1854, when an order was issued by the Governor of Bengal (1st March, 1854) to the Commissioner of Assam, communicating his determination to separate the civil functions of the Political Agent in the Cossyah Hills from the command of th