EMPEROR Vs. MAHAMED KASSAM PANWALLA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by Government against the acquittal of the accused, who was charged with infringement of the provisions of Section 5(1) (b) of the Bombay Shops and Establishments Act of 1939 and Rule 12(10), (5) of the rules made under the Act.

(2.) THE accused is the keeper of a panshop, which he conducts himself and in which he employs no one. On February 15, 1941, he sold a pan worth one pice at about 10-20 p.m., and thereby he is alleged to have infringed Section 5 of the Act.

(3.) THE learned Magistrate was of opinion that it is implicit in the word "employer" that somebody should be employed. But with all respect to the learned Magistrate, that is disregarding the definition contained in the Act. Undoubtedly the word "employer", according to its. ordinary meaning in the English language, signifies a person who employs somebody else. But it is competent for the Legislature to enact that in a particular Act the word shall include the owner of a business, whether or no anybody is employed therein; and that seems to me the effect of the present definition. If one were to read into the definition the provision that an employer must employ somebody, then I think undoubtedly Section 5 would not apply to a one-man-shop; but I have no doubt from the terms of the whole Act, that the section was intended to include such a shop. Section 6 provides that no person shall after the closing hour fixed under Section 5 carry on in or adjacent to a street or a public place the sale of any goods. THE effect of that section, or one effect at any rate, is to protect an employer, who has been compelled to close his shop at 9 p.m., from competition by sales in a public place after that hour. That may not be the only object of the section; another object may be to prevent a man who has been compelled to close his shop from reopening his business in the street or other public-place. But, at any rate, protection of the shop, which is compelled to close at 9 p.m., from outside competition is one of the effects of Section 6, and the same may be said of Section 14, which provides that after the hour fixed for closing. of shops under Section 5, no goods of the kind sold in such shops shall be sold in any restaurant, eating house, theatre or any other place of public amusement or entertainment except for consumption on the premises. That section clearly protects the shop which has been compelled to close at 9 o'clock from competition after that hour by a place of public amusement. If Section 5 does not apply to a one-man shop, one would certainly expect to find some provision protecting the employer who is compelled to close his shop at 9 o'clock, from competition by the one-man shop after that hour; and there is no such provision in the Act. It seems to me, therefore, that there is no justification for restricting the meaning which the Legislature has seen fit to give to the word "employer" for the purposes of this Act, although the meaning may not be the one normally attached to the word in the English language.