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6. A new magistrate then took charge of the case and passed an order directing the accused to be tried by the Court of session. This order was set aside in revision by the High Court (Mack J.) and the magistrate was directed to frame charges, if any, against the several accused after discharging those accused against whom no case was made out. The Assistant Public Prosecutor was directed to give full assistance to the Court by crystallising and simplifying the prosecution case so far as possible. In pursuance of this direction the Assistant Public Prosecutor supplied the magistrate with a draft of 67 charges, who then proceeded to frame them against all the accused, except 19, 20 and 21, who were discharged. At this stage the petitions giving rise to these appeals were made to the High Court and these again came up at first before Mack J. and later before a Division Bench.

"We do not think Lord Wright could have visualized the possibility of a case such as this, where after a trial before a magistrate lasting for 2 1/2 years a confused conglomeration of charges has resulted, bewildering not merely to any defending counsel, but also to any trying Court and on the basis of which no further trial can possibly proceed on a vast accumulation of matter indiscriminately flung into the case. As regards magisterial discretion it has unfortunately been quite impossible for the magistrate who framed these charges to exercise any at all. He was called upon to deal with what appears to us an impossible situation and to frame charges on a vast mass of material with which even his predecessor, who sedulously piled it up at the instance of the prosecution, found it beyond his capacity to deal. He therefore merely accepted the draft charges presented to him by the Assistant Public Prosecutor. We are in sympathy with his helplessness and the predicament in which he found himself. He is a revenue magistrate without any legal training and we cannot blame him for accepting the guidance of the Assistant Public Prosecutor of Madras who must bear full responsibility for the charges framed in this case.