Reference...
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Sir Arthur Grattan Bellew
Mr. Norwood (Ministry of Overseas Development)
Please see my minute of 6 November, particularly paragraph 5. We need to consider what remedial action to recommend to Ministers.
2. Sergeant Chu was dismissed in 1962 by the Commissioner of Police under the Police Force Ordinance. No statutory right of appeal lay to the Governor. In this respect paragraph 2 of my minute dated 6 November is incorrect. But he did petition the Governor for reinstatement in 1965, the latter seeing no grounds to intervene (Flat G). But on what basis could the Governor have intervened had he felt disposed to? As I understand the position, there is no way short of special legislation by which the Governor can reverse or modify the original decision. Given the special circumstances of this case as set out in paragraph 1 of my minute of 6 November, I think it would be politically very difficult (if not dangerous in the context of our current relations with China) by special legislation to reinstate Sergeant Chu retrospectively or to substitute retirement in the public interest as proposed by Mr. Norwood in his minute of 9 October.
3.
There remains the solution you have proposed in paragraph 4 of your minute at Flag B; namely, the grant of an ex gratia pension of the amount that he would have received by way of pension if he had retired at the date of his dismissal in 1962. This of course would not clear Sergeant Chu's name.
The difficulty I see is that, if he were to press for full clearance using the Parliamentary channels that he has established, we might find it difficult to stop at the grant of an ex gratia pension since this would amount to admission of doubt on our part about the justice of the original decision. Could we in fact maintain the line that this was an act of clemency taken in the light of further consideration of all the circumstances in this case, but that it did not imply any doubt about the correctness of the original decision?
6.5. Cartes
(W. S. Carter)
15 November, 1967.
Sergeant chur having been found guilty If an avistant Commissioner of Polia and dismissed the Force by the Commoner, under powus confined on them by the Pohie Force Ordinand, in my wow, he cannot now to deemed to have been
retued in the public interest nor may
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