FOOD INSPECTOR PERUMBAVOOR MUNICIPALITY Vs. SUNDARA RAJ

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Challenging an order of acquittal passed in STC 378 of 1978, a case under the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (herein after referred to as the Act), the Food Inspector, Perumbavoor Municipality has filed the appeal. The two accused before the Trial Court, who are respectively respondents 1 and 2 herein, were tried by the Judicial Magistrate of I Class, Perumbavoor, on a complaint filed by the Food Inspector, (Pw 1) alleging that the 2nd accused, salesman in the shop of the 1st accused, sold 450 grams of butter to the Food Inspector at 11.30 a.m. on September 24, 1977, which on analysis was found adulterated.

(2.) In support of the prosecution case, besides Pw. 1, the Food Inspector, Pws. 2 and 3 who have attested the mahazar Ext P4 were examined and documents including Ext. P6 report of the Public Analyst were marked.

(3.) In denying their guilt, when examined on the prosecution evidence, the 1st accused denied the truth of the prosecution case and stated that he is not the owner of the shop, while the 2nd accused although denied that he is the employee of the 1st accused, admitted the sale of the article of food in question to the Food Inspector and the sampling of the same by the Food Inspector in accordance with the provisions of the Act. But he challenged the correctness of the report of the Public Analyst stating that it is unreliable. He further stated that what the Food Inspector demanded from him was butter, that he told the Food Inspector that what he was having was goat butter, that the Food Inspector then replied that that it did not matter what butter it was, that the butter which he sold to the Food Inspector was kept in a vessel containing water and it was without drying out the water that he sold the same to the Food Inspector.