Special police officer's exclusive role in investigating offences under the Act upheld by the majority; ordinary police excluded.

The Act was treated as a self-contained code for offences created by it, and the majority read its enforcement scheme to mean that the special police officer and his assistants alone could detect, prevent, and investigate those offences. Although the offences were cognizable, the powers of arrest, search, and related enforcement steps were linked to the special police officer rather than ordinary police machinery, so regular police investigation was excluded to avoid duplication and inconsistency. Mudholkar, J. dissented, holding that the Act did not expressly confer exclusive investigative power on the special police officer and that ordinary powers under the Criminal Procedure Code were not displaced.

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Issues: Whether offences under the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 could be investigated by a regular police officer, or whether investigation was confined to the special police officer appointed under the Act.

Analysis: The majority held that the Act was a self-contained code for dealing with offences created by it, and that its machinery showed that the special police officer was intended to be the officer in charge of all police functions connected with those offences. The Act made the offences cognizable, but the powers of arrest, search, and other steps connected with enforcement were specifically linked to the special police officer and his subordinates. The expression "dealing with offences under this Act" was read broadly to include detection, prevention, and investigation, and the scheme of the Act was taken to imply exclusion of ordinary police investigation in order to avoid duplication and inconsistency.

Conclusion: The special police officer and his assistants alone were competent to investigate offences under the Act, and a regular police officer could not do so.

Dissenting Opinion: Mudholkar, J. held that the Act did not expressly confer exclusive power of investigation on the special police officer. In his view, the words "dealing with offences" were insufficient to exclude the ordinary powers of an officer-in-charge of a police station under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, and the special police officer derived any power to investigate only from the general provisions of that Code, not from the Act itself.

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