TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1960 (10) TMI 91
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....al Code was pending against Vishnu Ramchandra, and he was not immediately externed, to enable him to attend the case. This prosecution came to an end on July 10, 1958, and resulted in his acquittal. Immediately afterwards, a constable took him outside the limits of Greater Bombay, and left him there. The prosecution case was that he returned to Greater Bombay, and was arrested at Pydhonie on August 24, 1958. He was prosecuted under s. 142 of the Bombay Police Act. His plea that he was forcibly brought back to Pydhonie and arrested was not accepted by the Presidency Magistrate, and he was convicted. He filed a revision application, which was heard by a learned single Judge of the High Court of Bombay. Three contentions were raised before the High Court. The first was that the Deputy Commissioner of Police had not applied his mind to the facts of the case before making the order of externment. The second was that s. 57 of the Bombay Police Act was prospective, and could not be made applicable, unless the conviction on which the action of externment was based, took place after the coming into force of that Act. The third was that the belief entertained by the Deputy Commissioner that....
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....nu Ramchandra based upon his conviction in the year 1949, he held that the order of externment must be regarded as invalid for that reason and also on the ground that the conviction was not after the coming into force of the Act. At the hearing before us, the respondent was not represented. We have heard Mr. Dhebar in support of the appeal, and, in our opinion, the High Court was not right in the view it had taken of s. 57 of the Act. The question whether an enactment is meant to operate prospectively or retrospectively has to be decided in accordance with well- settled principles. The cardinal principle is that statutes must always be interpreted prospectively, unless the language of the statutes makes them retrospective, either expressly or by necessary implication. Penal statutes which create new offences are always prospective, but penal statutes which create disabilities, though ordinarily interpreted prospectively, are sometimes interpreted retrospectively when there is a clear intendment that they are to be applied to past events. The reason why penal statutes are so construed was stated by Erle, C. J., in Midland Rly. Co. v. Pye 10 C.B. (N.S.) 179, 191 in the following word....
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....it and' is not necessarily retrospective. But here the object of the enactment is not to punish offenders, but to protect the public against public houses in which spirits are retailed being kept by persons of doubtful character On looking at the Act, the words used seem to import the intention to protect the public against persons convicted in the past as well as in future; the words are in effect equivalent to 'every convicted felon'." In the same case, Archibald, J., expressed himself forcefully when he observed:- "I quite agree, if it were simply a penal enactment, that we ought not to give it a retrospective operation but it is an enactment with regard to public and social order, and infliction of penalties is merely collateral." Similarly, in Ex Parte Pratt [1884] 112 Q.B. 334, which dealt with the words " a debtor commits an act of bankruptcy " to enable the Court to make a receiving order, Cotton, L. J., gave the words a retrospective operation, observing:-- " I think that no reliance can be placed on the words I commits' as showing that only acts of bankruptcy committed after the Act came into operation are intended." ....
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....onduct on their character, the ordinary rule of construction need not be strictly applied." In Taher Saifuddin v. Tyebbhai Moosaji A.I.R. 1953 Bom. 183, z86, 187, the same principles were applied by Chagla, C. J. and Bhagwati, J. (as he then was), and reference was made also to The Queen v. Inhabitants of St. Mary Whitechapel [1848) 12 Q.B. 120 (B): 116 E.R. 811 where Lord Denman, C. J., in his judgment observed:- "it was said that the operation of the statute was confined to persons who had become widows after the Act passed, and that the presumption against a retrospective statute being intended supported this construction; but we have before shown that the statute is in its direct operation prospective, as it relates to future removals only, and that it is not properly called a retrospective statute because a part of the requisites for its action is drawn from time antecedent to its passing." Now s. 57 of the Bombay Police Act, 1951, does not create a new offence nor makes punishable that which was not an offence. It is designed to protect the public from the activities of undesirable persons who have been convicted of offences of a particular kind. The section ....