UNION OF INDIA Vs. S P AGGARWAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Vide impugned order dated May 28, 1980, a Metropolitan Magistrate, New Delhi, has discharged respondent No. 1-S.P. Aggarwal while he has directed the framing of charges against M.C. Arora, Manager of the hotel from whom the sample was taken which was found to be adulterated and against Aggarwal Hotels Limited which owns the Alka Hotel from where the sample of the curd was lifted. The Union of India has preferred this petition for setting aside the order the Metropolitan Magistrate by which Shri S.P. Aggarwal has been discharged.

(2.) The learned Metropolitan Magistrate has given the finding that no sufficient evidence has been led by the Union of India to prove that S.P. Aggarwal though a Managing Director of the said company was, in fact, incharge of and was responsible to the company for the conduct of the business of the company at the time the sample was lifted.

(3.) In the complaint it was mentioned that M.C. Arora, from whom the sample was taken, had described S.P. Aggarwal as the Managing partner of M/s. Alka Hotel and Restaurant. No other fact was mentioned in the complaint to show that S.P. Aggarwal was incharge of and responsible for conduct of the business of the said; restaurant. Later on, in evidence it came out that Alka Hotel and Restaurant was the business being run by Aggarwal Hotels Private Limited Company of which S.P. Aggarwal is the Managing Director. In pre-charge evidence, Food Inspector PW3 M.K. Bhan has deposed that before M.C. Arora had given the sample he had given a ring to S.P. Aggarwal and S.P. Aggarwal also talked with the Food Inspector and he permitted Shri Arora to give the sample. However, this particular testimony of M.K.. Bhan, on the face of it, would not have been sufficient to show that, in fact, S.P. Aggarwal, though Managing Director of the company, was incharge of responsible to the company for the conduct of the business of the company being run in the Alka Hotel and Restaurant. The learned Metropolitan Magistrate only referred to this part of the evidence and thus, concluded that in absence of any evidence to show that S.P. Aggarwal was incharge of and responsible to the company for the conduct of the business at the time the sample was lifted, no charge could be framed against S.P. Aggarwal under Section 17 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act as it existed before amendment of the said Act.