Queen-Empress vs Lalta Prasad

Blair, J.—This is a case which has been submitted to this Court u/s 438 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the recommendation that the order of conviction should be quashed. The person convicted is unquestionably a resident of Farrukhabad. He made it his business to let out horses and ponies on hire, and a certain pony, his property, was being used, and cruelly used, on the high road between Saharanpur and Rajpur. The driver who committed the ill-usage was his servant; the nature of the ill-usage was this, that the pony was driven when it was, through collar galls, quite unfit to be so driven. The question is whether the owner "permitted" such illegal employment of the animal. The word "permit" has a well-known meaning, and, unless under very exceptional circumstances, implies knowledge of that which is permitted. Such knowledge, it is not suggested, was in the possession of the owner of the pony. Mr. Chamier has been instructed to call my attention to two cases in the English Reports, in which a larger meaning has been given to the word "permit" than that which it bears in common parlance. One case is reported in 13 C.P.LJ 319; the other is reported in Law Reports, 12 Q.B. 639. In one case the person convicted was the owner of a licensed Music Hall. The other was a case of a Railway Company. I do not think the special circumstances existing in those cases have any parallel in this, and T am not aware of any case arising in an Indian Court in which the word "permit" has been interpreted, in a quasi-criminal case, in any meaning more extensive than that which it obtains in common parlance. No doubt the decision of this case adversely to the conviction will materially limit the usefulness of the Act. That is a conclusion which I cannot obviate if the plain wording of the Act seems to me to make for the more limited construction. I therefore reluctantly set aside this conviction and order the fine, if paid, to be at once returned.