CHAPTER XIII.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
FORMER COURTS.COURTS AND LAWS IN THE AGENCY — Limits of the Agency- Agency rules — Laws in force in the Agency __CIVIL JUSTICE ELSEWHERE — Existing courts — Amount of litigation — Registration. CRIMINAL JUSTICE — The various tribunals — Former meriah sacrifices — Crime and criminal castes. POLICE. JAILS. APPENDIX, Laws in force in the Agency.
THE report of 1784 of the Circuit Committee throws a lurid light on the judicial methods in force in the district before the arrival of the British. 'During the Muhammadan government an adálat was established at Chicacole in which the ámildar, nominally the Faujdar, was supposed to preside. But he appears to have disposed of the authority and profits, which were established at 25 per cent, on the amount of property.' Petty disputes were settled by pancháyats or by the heads of villages, the Hindus preferring this method to recourse to a Musalman court. After the dissolution of Musalman rule, no regular courts of justice existed, 'the renter's decision being the only resource of the injured, so that those who have money generally escape by a well-applied present, while the poor, who are perhaps the really aggrieved, frequently undergo a corporal punishment. This authority leaves the renter frequently judge and party in his own cause; therefore an equitable distribution of justice is not to be expected.'
The earliest British court in the settlement at Vizagapatam appears to have been that established in 1742 by an order that the Council do 'meet regularly at the Choultry for administering justice to the inhabitants.' Confinement, 'whether to the Choultry, the Cookhouse, the person's private house or elsewhere,' required the sanction of a majority of the Council and had to be reported at once to the authorities at Madras.
At the beginning of the last century Lord Cornwallis' system of civil and criminal courts was introduced in this Presidency and since then the general history of the administration of justice has been the same in Vizagapatam as in other districts, with the one exception of the establishment in the Agency of the special judicial system which still obtains there.
As a result of the constant disturbances in Vizagapatam and Ganjám which at length, at the end of 1832, necessitated as already (p. 57) related, the despatch of Mr. Russell as Special
