JUDGMENT : 1. This is an application for transfer. Two persons, Gobind Sahai and Babu Ram, have been sent up by the police as persons to whom Section 110 of the Cr PC, is applicable. The case came before Babu Jai Narain, Magistrate of the 1st Class, on 1st November 1913. It remained with him until 22nd December 1913, and the case had proceeded only thus far that a large number of witnesses for the prosecution had been examined, and some of them cross-examined, and the witnesses for the defence still remained unheard. The application now is that these proceedings be transferred from the Court of Babu Jai Narain to the Court of any other competent Magistrate in the same District of Meerut or any other district. The contention is based upon Section 526(1) Cls. (a) and (e) of the Cr PC. It certainly has not been made to appear to me that a fair and impartial inquiry or trial cannot he had in the Court of Babu Jai Narain. Had this been the only matter hinted at, I would have refused the order of transfer. But the whole procedure adopted by Babu Jai Narain, as it appears from the order sheet shows a deplorable weakness on the part of this Magistrate. It is much to be feared that if it remains in his hands it will be some months before this case is brought to a close. It is never the intention of the Code that proceedings under Ch. 8 should be thus long drawn out. I do not know under what section the police arrested Gobind Sahai and Babu Ram in this case. But I am not concerned with that. The police had every opportunity and should have carefully consider before they entered on proceedings under Section 110 of the Cr PC, that evidence was forthcoming against these two persons. Along with these two persons they sent up either in actuality or on paper no less than twenty witnesses. Now if Gobind Sahai and Babu Ram are persons who by habit commit the various offences mentioned in Section 110 of the Cr PC, or if they are so desperate and dangerous as to render their being at large without security hazardous to the community, this fact should undoubtedly appear from the evidence of twenty witnesses and indeed it seems to me that number is too large. 2. 2. The question in issue is a question of habit and must be known and ought to be an issue on which ten or twelve respectable witnesses could give definite and clear evidence. I am not, of course, pronouncing either one way or the other as to the character of these men. But if they cannot be brought within the provisions of S. 110 by the evidence of respectable witnesses to the number of ten or twelve, they will not be brought within the provisions of that section by the evidence of fifty witnesses, and I find from the order sheet that no less than 51 witnesses have already been examined against these two persons. If the Magistrate had consulted his Code of Criminal Procedure and dealt with the case firmly, he should have stopped it as soon as the twenty witnesses mentioned by the police had been heard. He is bound by law to hear those witnesses and cannot escape from it. But he is not bound by law to hear one witness beyond twenty or twenty-one. The law clearly lays down that after the witnesses produced in support of the case have been heard the Magistrate is then to ascertain the names of persons likely to be acquainted with the facts of the case and shall summon to give evidence before himself only such of them as he, the Magistrate thinks necessary. He is not bound by law to accept a list thrown at his head from time to time by the police or by anyone else, and it would be well if the Magistrates have this more dearly in mind. The length to which cases are spun out threatens to be a danger to the administration of justice, the Magistrates having recorded the evidence of 51 witnesses in support of the one side, he has apparently no difficulty in granting summonses for two hundred witnesses on the opposite side. This shows to what length cases of this kind can be prolonged if the Magistrate is not firm enough to steer his bark close to the boundaries laid down by the law. I understand from the learned counsel, who appears for Gobind Sahai and Babu Ram, that if this case goes to another Court his clients are prepared to accept the evidence as it stands subject to cross-examination of some of the witnesses. I understand from the learned counsel, who appears for Gobind Sahai and Babu Ram, that if this case goes to another Court his clients are prepared to accept the evidence as it stands subject to cross-examination of some of the witnesses. It is to be hoped that the Magistrate to whom the case will go will carefully study the law and be firm on the question of allowing cross-examination. He must allow it within the limits of the law. He is not bound to and should not, save in very exceptional eases, allow it beyond such limits. Witnesses have their rights and the Code does not intend them to be harassed and inconvenienced as too often happens to be the case. I do not know how the Magistrate has come to the issuing of summonses before he need have considered that question at all. I gather from an order in the order sheet that the Court has summoned witnesses without seeing that the expenses necessary for those witnesses have been deposited before the summonses have been issued. Where a Magistrate is of opinion that he ought to take expenses, it is only common sense that he should realize those expenses before he issues the summonses. In the hope that this case will now find its way to a Magistrate who in the ends of justice will fix definite dates fixing his undivided attention to this case and not allow himself to be drawn to one side or the other by extraneous or irrelevant matters, I direct that this case be removed from the file of Babu Jai Narain, Magistrate of the First Class, to she file of the District Magistrate, Meerut, who will either try the case himself or see that it is made over to some other Magistrate in the District competent to try the case.