Amrik Singh vs The State of Punjab

Gurdev Singh, J.—The Petitioner, Amrik Singh, stands convicted u/s 16(l)(a)of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, on the finding that he was selling adulterated milk. Besides urging for the acceptance of the defence plea that the Petitioner was not carrying it for sale Mr. S.S. Kang appearing for the Petitioner has raised three legal contentions:

(1) That there has been no proper compliance with the provis-isons of Section 20 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act as not proved that Shri S.S. Jogi who purports to have instituted the complaint against the Petitioner had the authority to institute it,

(2) That there is not a tittle of evidence on record to prove that that complaint is in fact signed by the said Shri S. S. Jogi, and accor-dingly it cannot be deemed to be a complaint instituted by a person duly authorised even if it be accepted that Shri S. S. Jogi had the authority to institute it; and

(3) that if the authority conferred on Shri S. S. Jogi was a gene-ral one, it was invalid in view of the decision of their Lordships of Supreme Court in Gour Chandra Rout and Another Vs. The Public Prosecutor, Cuttack, .

On reference to the record I find that in the course of the trial there was no challenge to the fact that the complaint was signed by Shri S. S. Jogi who had specifically in paragraph 5 of the complaint stated that he was authorized to file it nor was it ever disputed that he had the authority to institute the complaint. Had any such objection was raised the Courts could have gone into the matter and recorded the necessary evidence to determine their validity. Recently in Dhian Singh v. Municipal Board, Saharanpur and another(Cr. A. No. 122 of 1967) (Criminal Appeal No. 122 of 1967) decided on the 31st of July 1969 their Lordships of the Supreme Court while dealing with the objection to the authority of the person instituting the complaint under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, observed as follows:

The question whether he was authorized by the Municipal Board to file the complaint was never put into issue Both the parties to the complaint proceeded on the basis that it was a validly instituted complaint. If the Municipal Board had not authorised him to file the complaint then the complaint itself was not maintainable. If that is so, no question of the invalidity of the appeal arises for consideration. It was never the case of the accused that the complaint was invalid. In K. C- Aggarwal v. Delhi Administration(C. A. No. 100 of 1966) (Criminal Appeal No 100 of 1966 decided on 27th of May, 1969), this Court has held that a complaint filed by one of the officers of a local authority is in law a complaint instituted by that local authority. Therefore if the complaint with which we are concerned in this case had been filed by the Food Inspector on the authority of local board, the complaint must be held to have been instituted by the local board itself. The question whether the Food Inspector had authority to file the complaint on behalf of the local Board is a question of fact. Official acts must be deemed to have been done according to law. If the accused had challenged the authority of the Food Inspector to file the complaint, the trial Court would have gone into that question. The accused cannot be permitted to take up that contention for the first time after the disposal of the appeal. This Court refused to entertain for the first time an objection as regards the validity of a sanction granted in Mangaldas Raghavji Ruparel and Another Vs. The State of Maharashtra and Another, Mr. Garg, learned Counsel for the accused urged that a permission u/s 20 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 to file a complaint is a condition precedent for validly instituting a complaint under the provisions of that Act The fulfilment of that condition must be satisfactorily proved by the complainant before a court can entertain the complaint. Without such a proof, the court will have no jurisdiction to try the case. In support of that contention of his he sought to take assistance from the decision of the Judicial Committee in Gokalchand Dwarkadass Morarka v. The King ( 75 I. A. 30), 75 I.A.30) and Madan Mohan Singh v. The State of U. P.(A.I.R. 1958 S.C. 736) AIR 1954 SC 736) Both those decisions deal with the question of the validity of sanctions given for the institution of certain criminal proceedings. The provisions under which sanction was sought in those cases required the sanctioning authority to apply its mind and find out whether there was any justification for instituting the prosecutions. The Judicial Committee as well as this Court has laid down that in such cases, the court must be satisfied either from the order of sanction or from the other evidence that all the relevant facts had been placed before the sanctioning authority and that authority had granted the sanction after applying its mind to those facts. The ratio of those decisions has no bearing on the facts of this case. u/s 20 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 no question of applying one''s mind to the facts of the case before the institution of the complaint arises as the authority to be conferred under that provision can be conferred long before a particular offence has taken place. It is a conferment of an authority to institute a particular case or even a class of cases. That section merely prescribes that persons or authorities designated in that section are alone competent to file complaints under the statute in question.

Before proceeding further, I would like to point out here that the reference in this quotation from the judgment of their Lordships of the Supreme Court to the case of K. C. Aggarwal v. Delhi Administration(C. A. No. 100 of 1966) (Criminal Appeal No. 100 of 1966) appears to be a printing error. In fact, the relevant authority is Municipal Committee v. Khem Chand(Cr. A. No. 8 of 1966) (Criminal Appeal No. 8 of 1966, decided on 27th May, 1969).

The extract from the judgment of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Dhian Singh v. The Municipal Board(C. A. No. 100 of 1966) reproduced in extenso fully meets two legal contentions raised on behalf of the Petitioner. The concluding portion of these judgments clearly indicate that the authority to institute a complaint u/s 20 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954, need not refer to a particular case but may be a general authority conferring power to institute proceedings for certain offences or class of cases

It is true that the prosecution under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act must be instituted by a person duly authorized in accordance with the provisions of Section 20 of the Act The complaint in this case purports to have been signed by Shri S. S. Jogi, Food Inspector, and it is specifically stated in paragraph 5 thereof that he is fully authorized to institute it. There is no denying the fact that the onus of proving its case rests on the prosecution, and the prosecution must make out all the ingredients of the offence complained of. I am inclined to agree with learned Counsel for the Petitioner that where consent of a person duly authorized by competent authority is required for initiation of proceedings against an accused person, the complainant should place facts before the Court to satisfy it that the relevant provisions of law pertaining to the initiation of such proceedings have been complied with. The question that, however, remains to be considered is whether the omission of the complainant to adduce such evidence regarding his authority to institute the complaint, or his failure to come into the witness-box to disclose what authority he had to file the complaint, invalidates the entire proceedings or affects the trial of the case. In my opinion, the answer to this qestion must be in the negative in view of the observations of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Dhian Singh''s case (Criminal Appeal 122 of 1967, supra). If in the complaint there is an averment that the person instituting the complaint has the requisite authority and no issue is joined on that point at the trial, the Court will be justified in accepting the recital as correct and need not go further into the matter if it has no reason to suspect that the recital of authority contained in the complaint is not correct. The question whether the person instituting the complaint is clothed with the requisite authority and whether the complaint is signed by the person who purports to have signed it, are questions of fact. The proper forum to determine the same is the Court conducting the trial and if those questions are not raised before it the Court of appeal will be justified in refusing to entertain such objections, if raised for the first time before it. In any case, the Court of Appeal has ample power to summon and examine evidence to satisfy itself that the proceedings were validly instituted by a person duly authorized. If it were necessary in this case, I would have had no hesitation in summoning Mr. S. S. Jogi to give evidence before me and to disclose in pursuance what authority he had acted in instituting the complaint. This power of the Court to summon Mr. jogi to clear up the matter has not been disputed, and the learned Counsel for the Petitioner does not insist that he should be summoned. I myself do not fined any justification for calling additional evidence when the learned Sessions Judge, to whom the appeal was taken, had refused to entertain this objection for the first time. The Court of appeal had the discretion to permit such objection to be raised, but if it did not do so I do not think that it, in any way, acted arbitrary in not exercising the discretion in favour of the Petitioner.

What has been stated above suffices to dispose of the legal contentions raised. This brings me to the defence plea that the Petitioner was not carrying the milk for sale. He pleaded that he was taking the milk to a relation of his in village Ramgarh as it was needed there in connection with a bhog ceremony. The Petitioner, no doubt, examined evidence in support of this plea, but the same has been considered and rejected by the Courts below, and I see no reason to take a different view.

As a last resort, Mr King pleaded for reduction of the sentence. The sentence awarded is the minimum prescribed by law, and I do not find any special reason for not imposing this minimum. In the result, the petition falls and is dismissed.