Hunter Committee

The Hunter Committee, officially the Disorders Inquiry Committee, was the Government of India's inquiry into the disturbances of 1919 in Bombay, Delhi and Punjab, including the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919. It was announced on 14 October 1919 on the orders of Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, and takes its common name from its chairman, Lord William Hunter, a former Solicitor General for Scotland.

Members: eight in all, five British and three Indian. The British members were Hunter, Justice George Rankin, W.F. Rice, Major-General Sir George Barrow and Thomas Smith. The Indian members were Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Pandit Jagat Narain and Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Khan. H.C. Stokes was secretary.

Key moments:

• 29 October 1919: the committee met in Delhi, then took evidence in Ahmedabad, Bombay and Lahore, with its main sittings at Lahore Town Hall.
• 19 November 1919: General Dyer was questioned at Lahore. By Scroll's account he admitted ordering the firing without warning and said he could have dispersed the crowd “perhaps even without firing”.
• Partway through, the Indian National Congress boycotted the hearings because the government would not release the jailed Punjab leaders on bail, and ran its own inquiry. Its conclusions differed widely from the government's: more than 1,500 casualties, about 1,000 of them killed.
• 8 March 1920: the report came out with six volumes of evidence.

What it found: The two reports split along the committee's lines. The majority, the British members, found that Dyer gave no notice to disperse, that he fired for too long, that his aim of producing a “moral effect” was a mistaken conception of duty, and that he overstepped his authority. It found no conspiracy to overthrow British rule in the Punjab. The Indian members, with Setalvad drafting, went further and called his conduct “inhuman and un-British”.

What followed: There was no prosecution. Wikipedia reports that the Legal and Home Members decided it was not possible for political reasons. Dyer was relieved of his command on 23 March 1920. The non-cooperation movement of 1920 to 1922 followed.