P L D 1952 Lahore 587 (PLP)

KAYANI, J.‑This is an application by the Advocate-- General under section 561‑A of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the use of our inherent powers with a view to correcting a clerical error in our judgment of the 7th June 1949, in Criminal Appeal No. 825 of 1948. In that case we dismissed the appeal of Habibullah and Ghulam Hussain from their conviction under section 302, Pakistan P. C., and sentences of transportation for life, and, accepting the petition of the Government for enhancement of the sentences, altered them to death, without expressly directing, in the language of section 368 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, that the accused be hanged by the neck till they are dead. We have been told that the present application has become necessary because in certain other cases, where the Sessions Judge sentenced an accused person to death, without adding the directive contained in section 368, and the sentence was confirmed by the High Court, the Provincial Government felt constrained to commute the sentence to one of transporta tion for life. Speaking for myself, I should hesitate to share the embarrassment of Government in so obvious a matter, even though it results from a surfeit of the quality of mercy, for when a Court passes a sentence of death, it neither means that this is to be regarded in certain events as a sentence of transportation, nor that it is to be executed in any manner suitable to the jail authorities. The only mode of executing a sentence of death known to the Code is that of hanging by the neck till the convict is dead, and if an argument could, therefore, be raised on the omission of the Court to specify the mode of execution, it would be based on an apprehen sion lest the sentence should be carried out by poisoning, dismemberment or any other barbarous method with which the ages are familiar. It is often overlooked in other contexts that Chapter 26 in which section 368 occurs and which is styled "Of the judgment", deals more with the form of the judgment than with anything that the Court finds by way of conviction or acquittal and for that reason the requirement of section 368 that "when any person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that he be hanged by the neck till he is dead" is merely a formal expression of the mode of execution, having little to do with the fundamental fact that the sentence is one of death, not of transportation, imprisonment or fine. If that interpretation were not accepted, we should, on the language of the Code, face a similar difficulty in setting an accused person at liberty in the event of his acquittal, for, under section 367 (4), one of the requirements of a judgment of acquittal is that "it shall state the offence of which the accused is acquitted and direct that he be set at liberty", and since it is not an uncommon feature of our judgments of acquittal that they find the accused not guilty but do not expressly direct their being set at liberty, the officer in charge of the prison may we refuse to enlarge them, an embarrass the Government still more, for in that case there would be no alternative course for adoption in the form of a partial release. Section 374 of the Code requires that when the Court of Session passes a sentence of death, the proceedings shall be submitted to the High Court and the sentence shall not be executed unless it is confirmed by the High Court. There is then a separate chapter dealing with the execution of sen tences, namely Chapter XXVIII, and section 381 which occurs in that chapter states that "when a sentence of death passed by a Court of Session is submitted to the High Court for confirmation, such Court of Session shall, on receiving the order of confirmation or other order of the High Court there on, cause such order to be carried into effect by issuing a warrant or taking such other steps as may be necessary". The form of the warrant which the Sessions judge issues is given in the Fifth Schedule at No. XXXV, and it expressly authorises and requires the Superintendent of the Jail where the convict is detained "to carry the said sentence into execution by causing" the prisoner named therein "to be hanged by the neck until he be dead

" Thus, after the sentence of death has been confirmed by the High Court, the Sessions Judge has no choice but to issue a warrant in the prescribed form and the Superintendent of the Jail has no choice but to execute the sentence in the manner laid down in the warrant. Since the Superintendent is not supposed to know the contents of the judgment, there is no occasion for any objection being taken by him or before him of the warrant being inconsonant with the judgment, and even were this possible, all that could be argued would be that since the judgment does not express the mode of execution the Superin tendent need not necessarily resort to the method of hanging and may adopt some other mode less unpleasant to the convict. This would certainly be a poor argument, to say nothing of its being unhelpful to the convict. It was, therefore, unnecessary for the Government to apply for relief, but since an application has been made, it is our duty to see if any relief can be granted. The application says that " in order to give effect to the judgment and to secure the ends of justice, it is necessary for the Hon'ble Court to correct the clerical error by adding the formal words necessary under section 368 of the Criminal P. C." It will thus be seen that while the application relies in its first part on the language of section 561‑A, it takes care to embrace a part of section 369 also, lest it should be held that the inherent powers of the High Court cannot be invoked in such a case, and that the judgment suffers merely from a clerical error. I shall reproduce the two sections below :‑ Section 561‑A :‑ " Nothing in this Code shall be deemed to limit or affect the inherent power of the High Court to‑make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to any order under this Code, or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice. Section 369 :‑ " Save as otherwise provided by this Code or by any other law for the time being in force or, in the case of a High Court established by Royal Charter, by the Letters Patent of such High Court, no Court, when it has signed its judgment, shall alter or review the same, except to correct a clerical error. Mr. Mahmud Shah for the respondents maintained that the omission in question was not a clerical error and that the High Court could use its inherent powers only where no express provision existed for giving effect to an order lawfully made, not where a provision existed, as in this case, but the Court had not availed of it. A useful judgment on the subject of inherent jurisdiction which he cited is Raju v. Emperor A I R 1928 Lah. 462, where an application was made under section 561‑A for reconsideration of a revision petition in a criminal case after it had been dismissed by the High Court. That was clearly not a case in which the ends of justice could be secured, as was contended, by resort to inherent powers after there had been a final adjudication and as such cannot be cited by way of analogy, but the observa tions made therein regarding the scope of section 561‑A may well be reproduced. "The instances of inherent powers", said their Lordships, "possessed by the High Court given in section 561‑A, namely, to make such orders as may be neces sary to give effect to its decisions, or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court, have always been assumed by Courts of record. The first class of cases comes under the well‑establish ed principle that whenever anything is required to be done by law, and it is found impossible to do that thing unless some thing not authorised in express terms be also done, then that something else will be supplied by necessary intendment ......... As an instance of the exercise of the inherent power of the Court to prevent an abuse of its process I may refer to Stephenson v. Carnett L R (189) 1 Q B 677 where the Court of appeal stayed as frivolous and vexatious and an abuse of the process of the Court an action in the High Court which raised a question already decided by a Court of competent jurisdiction. The concluding words of the section, 'or otherwise to secure the ends of justice', can only mean that such other inherent power which the Court possesses is likewise pre served. The High Court is not given, nor did it ever possess an unrestricted and undefined power to make any order which it might please to consider was in the interest of justice. Its inherent powers are as much controlled by principle and precedent as are its express powers by statute." Other cases cited for the respondents, barring Emperor v. Sukhdev A I R 1929 Lah. 705, do not yield any guiding principle. In Emperor v. Sukhdev, (Supra), where the accused person was ill and not represented by his counsel, an application having been made by the Government under section 561‑A that the Court should assign a counsel to him in order that his personal appearance should be dispensed with under section 540‑A, it was held that the inherent jurisdiction of the Court could not be invoked for doing something oppos ed to any provision of lad, or the general principles of criminal jurisprudence. For section 540‑A required that where in any such case the accused is not represented by a pleader, the Court may either adjourn the inquiry or trial or order that the case of such accused‑if there are more accused than one‑be taken up or tried separately. In Mahadya v, Crown A I R 1931 Nag. 101 it was held that the High Court had no inherent power to entertain an appeal presented beyond the period of limitation where no cause exists for condoning the delay under section 5 of the Limita tion Act. In Ghansham Dass Birla v. Suraj Bhan A I R 1940 Lab. 192 the High Court, while transferring a case from one Magis trate to another, had given certain directions which, although clear to the Judge, were regarded as obscure by one party and an application was made under section 561‑A that they might be clarified. It was held that there was no inherent power to amend an order by way of explanation or otherwise. It was clear that there was no defect to be supplied in the order and the learned Judge was constrained to say that the conduct of the counsel who had misrepresented the effect of the order was "uncandid". These bases, as I have already said, are not helpful. On behalf of the Government, the learned Assistant Advocate‑General cited Nagappa Vyankappa Sah v. Emperor A I R 1931 Bom. 529 and Emperor v. Rashbehari Singh A I R 1934 Pat.

551. In the former case a prayer was made for the appellant under section 397 of the Code, that his sentence of seven years' imprisonment be made concurrent with two other sentences in different cases, and on an objection being raised by the Crown counsel that this could have been done only by the trial Court, it was held that the terms of section 423 and of section 561‑A seemed to be wide enough to enable an order of the kind to be made, This application of section 561‑A would appear to be undo fined. In the Patna case, the Sessions judge convicted a person under section 376, Indian P. C., and sentenced him "to undergo rigorous imprisonment for two years and to whipping of twenty stripes after the sentence of imprisonment has been undergone". Realising that the sentence of whipping could not, under section 391, be postponed to the sentence of im prisonment, he made a reference to the High Court for correcting the illegality in revision. The High Court, while dismissing the appeal at, the first hearing, issued notice in the revision petition, and the question was whether the petition could be heard after the appeal had been dismissed. It was held by a Single Judge that under section 561‑A the mistake could be corrected. This, I venture to say, was more properly a case for the exercise of revision than inherent powers, for there is nothing in section 439 to suggest that after the decision of an appeal a revision cannot be entertained on a point which has not been decided in appeal. On a consideration of these authorities and the language of section 561‑A, I respectfully agree with the reasoning in Raju v. Emperor A I R 1928 Lah. 462, that section 561‑A, merely secures whatever inherent powers the High Court possessed before that section was enacted in 1923 and that when it is intended to use them "to give effect to any order under this Code", it should be understood that the Code itself provides no machinery for giving effect to such order. Thus, if the Code had made it lawful for a Court to pass a sentence of death, but there had been no provision for the execution of the sentence, the High Court would have inherent powers to make a further order providing for execution. Where, how ever, the Code itself provides that the sentence should be executed in a certain manner, but the Court inadvertently fails to pass an order in accordance with such provision, there will be no case for the use of inherent powers. Whether or not there exists a power to supply an obvious defect in the order is a different matter. If the words "or otherwise to secure the ends of justice" mean‑and I think they do‑that such other power which the Court possesses is also preserved, then the power to supply an obvious defect in the order, always given that principle and precedent approve of it, will be included. To this subject I shall advert later. The application, it will be recalled, contains also a prayer for the correcting of a "clerical error", apparently with reference to section 369, and the learned counsel for the Government relied on 91 Nafar Chandra Pal Chowdhry v. Sid dhartha Krishna Mazumdar I L R (1920) 47 Cal. 974, for the view, apparently, that section 369 will not stand in the way because the correction of a mistake of this kind does not amount to an amendment or review of the judgment. In that case a Magistrate had, nearly three months after passing an order under section 145, passed an order as to costs under section 148 (3), and it was held that since the first order did not deal with the question of costs and the language of section 148 did not forbid an order as to costs within a reason able time of the order under section 145, it could not be argued that the original order had been altered or reviewed. This is clearly not a case from which any assistance can be derived, for when a sentence of death is passed, the Court must direct at the same time that the accused be hanged by the neck till he is dead, and this direction is by no means a separate order. On the subject, M. Mahmud Shah relied for the respon dents on the Crown v. Saidu Pak. L R (1950) Lah. 52, where the High Court had confirmed a sentence of death passed by the Sessions judge, and after the confirmation an application was made by the Crown under section 369 for the correction of a clerical error in the judgment of the High Court inasmuch as neither the Sessions judge nor the High Court had said in their respective judgments that the accused were to be hanged by the neck till they' were dead. The application was rejected on the ground that the "clerical error", if any, was in the judgment of the Sessions judge, that the High Court could only correct its own error, and that the function of the High Court under section 374 was merely to confirm the sentence of death if it was appropriate. It was also pointed out that the expression "clerical error" had been explained in Wharton's Law Lexicon as "an error in a document which can only be explained by considering it to be a slip or mistake of the party preparing or copying it", and since the present was not a mistake or slip made in the preparation or the copying of the judgment, it was doubtful whether the correction required to be made would be a mere clerical error. "So far as the judgment of the High Court is concerned, it was never the intention nor was it at all neces sary that in dismissing the appeal and confirming the sentence of death the manner of the execution of the death sentence in accordance with section 368, Criminal P. C., should have been indicated". If the last sentence is consequential to what precedes it, the intention would appear to be that it is doubtful whether there is any clerical error in the judgment of the High Court because the mistake or slip was in the judgment of the Sessions Judge. At the same time the passage is capable of meaning that there is possibly no clerical error even in the judgment of the Sessions judge because the omission to direct that the accused be hanged by the neck till they are dead was not "a mistake or slip made in the preparation or the copying of the judgment". The matter is, therefore, left open so far as concerns a clerical mistake in the judgment of the High Court, and here arise three questions, namely, (l.) whether section 369 covers a judgment of the High Court in appeal or revision (2) whether the insertion of the words "the accused shall be hanged by the neck till they are dead" amounts to an alteration or review of the judgment, and (3) whether the omission amounts to a clerical error. (1) I have pointed out in Criminal Revision No. 516 of 1949 (The Crown v. Ghulam Muhammad) following The Crown v. Atta Muhammad I L R (1944) Lah. 391 (F B), that Chapter 26‑"Of the judgment"‑in which section 369. lies deals primarily with the judgment of the original Court, as the opening words of section 366 show, and that the provisions of this chapter have been made applicable by section 424 to the judgment of an appellate Court other than the High Court. In fact the very words of the reference in section 424 to "the rules contained in chapter 26 as to the judgment of a criminal Court of original jurisdiction" negative any supposition that chapter 26 applies to anything but the judgment of "a criminal Court of original jurisdiction". And so far as the appellate judgment of the High Court goes, even section 424 does not cover it. This does not, however, mean that the High Court can alter or review its judgment at pleasure, for judgments in appeal have been made final by section 430, except where they can be revised, in which case, it would appear logical to assume, their finality is postponed to the order in revision. All that may be said at this stage is that section 369 does not expressly apply to a judgment of the High Court in appeal or revision, but since the powers of the High Court could not be less than those of subordinate Courts, in the matter of cor recting clerical errors, such corrections would apparently be made in the use of inherent powers. (2) Alteration or Review.‑These words do not appear to have been used in any special sense. An alteration means change, whether in character or appearance, and a document would be altered if it is made different in some respect, 6 whether that end is achieved by a mere insertion or by the substitution of something for something else. There would thus be an alteration of the judgment when an argument is added even in support of the existing arguments, The judgment would, therefore, be altered if certain words are inserted in it, whether they do or do not alter the sense. An alteration which changes the sense also, whether wholly or partially, will be covered by the term "review". Now since the insertion of the words in question will not alter the purport of the judgment, which is that a sentence of death has been passed, but only' indicate the mode in which that purport is to be accomplished, it will not amount to a review of the judgment. There will nevertheless be an alteration. (3) Clerical Error.‑This has been defined in Wharton's Law Lexicon as "an error in a document which can only be explained by considering it to be a slip or mistake of the party preparing or copying it". One might usefully add the word "omission" to the phrase "slip or mistake". We are familiar with the phrase "accidental slip or omission". What it pre supposes is want of intention. In other words, if I were conscious of what I was doing, I should not do it. If I were asked whether I propose any mode of execution other than that of hanging by the neck and my reply were "Of course n9t", but even then I left out the words in question unconsciously, my judgment could properly be said to suffer from an accidental slip or omission. In England, clerical errors in judgments are corrected under Order XXVIII, Rule 11 of the Rules of the Supreme Court. (See Wharton's Law Lexicon under the title "Clerical error"). An example of a clerical error arising from an accidental omission will be found in a case decided by the House of Lords, Hatton v. Harris L R 1892 A C

547. The circumstances out of which the appeal arose were as follows. In 1842, one Georgina Mary Benson obtained a judgment against a person named Knipe upon a bond in the penal sum of 1,000 and costs, the bond being one for securing the principal sum of 500 and 6 percent. interest. In 1852, upon a Bill having been filed on the Equity Side of the Court of Exchequer by certain judgment‑creditors of Knipe, the usual decretal order was made by the Lord Chancellor for the Master to take an account. The Master accordingly made a report, setting out in a schedule an account of all charges, in order of priority, affecting the lands, tenements, rents and hereditaments of Knipe, number seven in the list being that in favour of Georgina Mary Benson on the strength of the judgment obtained by her in 1842. "in the penal sum of 1,000, for the purpose of secu ring 500 with 6 percent. interest". Upon that report the Lord Chancellor made a decree on the 9th of June 1853 declaring that the several sums mentioned in the report, with interest as stated therein, "are well charged upon the lands and premises in said report in that behalf respectively mentioned, and are incumbrances affecting the said lands and premises respectively". In 1856 portions of the lands were sold under an order of the Incumbered Estates Court Ireland and the incumbrancers prior to Georgina Mary Benson were paid off. Nothing was done thereafter for a great many years and in the meantime the appellant Hatton had succeeded to the interest of G. M. Benson by a Will. In 1890, Hatton discovered that there were in Court certain sums of money standing to the credit of Knipe's estate and he applied for payment to him of 1775 odd, being the amount of 500 with interest at 6 percent. calculated down to that time. The respondent Harris, being the next incumbrancer, objected that no more than the penal sum of 1,000 was in any way chargeable upon the land. The Land judge, however, acting upon the decree of the Lord Chancellor, although it was erroneous, accepted the applica tion of Hatton. The Court of Appeal set aside the order of the Land Judge and the House of Lords agreed with the Court of Appeal. The question was whether an erroneous decree could be corrected. Lord Herschell observed : "It was said first of all that this was not an error or omission within the meaning of this rule (Rule 11, Order XXVIII, Supreme Court Rules) because it was possible that the learned Lord Chancellor had intended to give these rights, even though he may have erred in point of law in giving them, that he may have thought that there were special circumstances which entitled the encumbrancer to a charge exceeding the penal sum in the bond. Therefore, my Lords, having regard to the nature of this case, I am unable to see any ground upon which it can be said that this order, in the terms in which it was made, could have been intended to be made by the Lord Chancellor. I myself think that it was a mere accidental omission that the words were not inserted that in the case of a bond the amount should not exceed the penalty ; and if attention had been called to the fact that those words were not so inserted, and that one incumbrancer may thereby be prejudiced as against another in respect of the omission, I cannot doubt that the correction would at once have been made". Lord Watson said : "I agree

in holding that the decree of the Lord Chancellor, dated the 9th of June 1853, is so expressed as to carry interest at 6 percent. until the principal sum of 500 is paid ; and that the omission from the decree of words restricting interest to the limit of the penal sum is due to an accidental slip. The law forbids the allowance of interest exceeding the limit unless there be exceptional circumstances to justify it . . . When an error of that kind has been committed, it is always within the competency of the Court, if nothing has intervened which would render it inexpedient or inequitable to do so, to correct the record in order to bring it into harmony with the order which the judge obviously meant to pronounce". Lord Macnaghten, styling the mistake as "as mere slip of the Registrar" and "an accidental omission" finalised his remarks thus : "Lastly it was suggested that possibly the Lord Chancellor's decree of 1853 as regards the direction as to interest was made advisedly. Everything is possible. Even a Lord Chancellor may possibly make a mistake. But one must use one's commonsense, and there are some mistakes which it is hardly decent to attribute to the Court. I have no doubt that the Court intended to make the 'usual order' . . . . . . It is impossible to conceive that the Court with its eyes open could have given interest beyond the penalty of the bond". In the result, the words "in the case of judgments on bonds the principal sum and interest not to exceed the amounts of the penalty on such bond" were inserted in the Lords Chancellor's decree‑after a lapse of 39 years. It will have been noticed that the words "mistake", "sliy" and "accidental omission" were used in these judgments synonymously with "clerical error". If, therefore, it is clear that the words "to be hanged by the neck till he is dead" are omitted from a judgment inadvertently, the omission should be treated as a clerical error. It could not be argued that when we altered the sentence of transportation to one of death, without specifying the mode of execution, we intended execution to take place in any manner other than that prescribed by the Code. If such intention can be attributed to us, then I must say with Lord Macnaghten that "one must use one's commonsense" for "there are some mistakes which it is hardly decent to attribute to the Court". In Wilson v. Carter, L R 1893 A C 638, while admitting an appeal to His Majesty, the Supreme Court of New South Wales directed in respect of the security for costs deposited in that Court, that the costs of the parties shall abide the judgment of the Privy Council, omitting to provide for the result of the appeal, in case the appeal should be dismissed for want of prosecution. The Privy Council dismissed the appeal for want of prosecution and the respondent applied to the Supreme Court for his costs. The Supreme Court express ed the opinion that the application should have been made to the Privy Council. The respondent accordingly went to the Privy Council, which held that the respondent should apply to the Supreme Court to correct its order by directing, in accordance with its manifest intention, that costs should abide the result of the appeal. In the course of the judgment their Lordships observed : "Their Lordships do not doubt that the Court has power at any time to correct an error in a decree or order arising from a slip or accidental omission, whether there is or is not a general order to that effect. A recent instance of the exercise of this power occurred in the case of Hatton v. Hasris L R 1892 A C: 547, before the House of Lords, where an error arising from an accidental omission was corrected after the lapse of forty years. The House of Lords in that case approved the views expressed by the Court of Appeal in Mellor v. Swire L R (1885) 30 Ch, D.

239. In Mellor v. Swire L R (1885) 30 Ch. D. 239, the question was whether the profits and produce of two collieries in which the testator had been engaged at the time of his death were to be paid to the tenants for life as income or whether they were to be capitalized and the tenant was only to ‑have the income arising from that capitalization. It was found that on a construction of the will the profits were given to the tenants for life; but the order, as passed and entered by the Registrar, inadvertently included two other collieries in which interest had been acquired after the decease of the testator, apparently with the income of the two original collieries. A question then arose whether the order could be corrected. Answering affirmatively, Cotton L. J. said, "But although

it is only in .special circumstances that the Court will interfere with an order which has been passed and entered, except in cases of a mere slip or verbal inaccuracy yet in my opinion the Court has jurisdiction over its own records, and if it finds that the order as passed and entered contains an adjudication upon that which the Court in fact has never adjudicated upon, then, in my opinion, it has jurisdiction, which it will in a proper case exercise, to correct its record, that it may be in accordance with the order really pronounced". Lindley, L. C. : "This case has raised a discussion of some importance because it was contended that when once the order of the Court was passed and entered, it could not be put right, even although as drawn, it did not express the order as intended to be made. I protest against any such notion. There is no such magic in passing and entering an order as to deprive a Court of jurisdiction to make its own records true, and if an order as passed and entered does not express the real order of the Court, it would, as it appears to be, be shocking to say that the party aggrieved cannot come here to have the record set right, but must go to the House of Lords by way of appeal . . . . It appears to me, therefore, that if it is once made out that the order, whether passed and entered or not, does nor express the order actually made, the Court has ample jurisdiction to set that right, whether it arises from a clerical slip or not". Bowen, L. J. added : "I think the true view is, as stated by the Lord Justic Cotton, that every Court has inherent power over its own records, as long as these records are within its power, and that it can set right any mistake in them It seems to me that there is inherent power in this Court to do what is asked. I do not think it is necessary to fall back upon the rules, though I think rules might be discovered which would be found to assert the exis tence of this power in the Court". It should not be understood to mean that this is a case in which the record does not conform to the order which 'we have actually pronounced. But even if that were so, it would appear that there is inherent jurisdiction in every Court over its own record, which is more than saying that every Court can correct an accidental. slip or omission in its judgment, Now since section 561‑A merely keeps alive the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court as its existed before 1923, it y follows that a power to correct it own record is included in that jurisdiction. This process of reasoning is based on the assumption that section 369 does not apply to the appellate or revisional judgment of the High Court, but if it did, the insertion of the words prayed for would supply merely a clerical error, which is within the competence of every Court. It is, therefore, direct that the following words should be added to our judgment. of the 7th June 1949 : "The appellants shall be hanged by the neck till they are dead". MUHAMMAD MUNIR, C. J.‑I agree with the order pro posed to be passed by my brother Kayani. One of the punishments prescribed by section 53 of the Indian P. C. is death. By section 368 of the Code of Criminal Procedure where a person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that he be hanged by the neck till he is dead. Thus, the only way in which a sentence of death can be executed is by hanging the person sentenced till he is dead. No other method of executing the sentence is recognised by the law and the Judge has no power to direct the sentence to be executed in any other way. The effect of section 368 therefore is the same as though the Code had provided that where a person is sentenced to death, he shall be hanged by the neck till he is dead. Accordingly, I do not see any difficulty in the way of executing a sentence of death by hang ing the person sentenced even if the Judge does not, as requir ed by section 368, incoroporate in his judgment the statutory direction. The form of the warrant that issues when the sentence is confirmed by the High Court directs the convict to be hanged by the neck till he is dead and where the sentence is imposed by the High Court either in appeal under section 417 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or in exercise of the powers of revision, the formal order that issues from the High Court contains a similar direction. In the present case I have seen this Court's order under section 425 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and it did contain the direction that each of the respondents was to be hanged by the neck until he was dead. This was a sufficient authority for the execution of the sentence in the prescribed way. If any order to supply the omission of the statutory direc tions is necessary, I have no doubt we have the jurisdiction n to make such order even though we might have become functus officio after signing our judgment and therefore incom petent to alter or review it. Our order sentencing the respon dents to death was an order under the Code of Criminal Procedure and until that order is executed, we retain the jurisdiction, to use the language of section 561‑A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, "to make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to" that order, and there is no ques tion of our reviewing or altering the judgment. I might mention that the sentence of death was imposed by us in June 1949 and the present petition has been preferred by the Crown almost about a year after our judgment. The offence was committed and the prisoners arrested in June 1948. Thus, two years have elapsed since the arrest and I doubt if on the principle of the precedents mentioned in letter No. 23/ 1/43‑G.G. (P), dated 26th January 1943, from the Secretary to the Governor‑General, Public, to the Home Secretary to Government, Punjab, it would be right to hang them now. K. M. A. Petition accepted.