EMPEROR Vs. GANPAT DATTU RASKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a revision application against an order of the First Class Magistrate, Kopergaon, convicting the applicant under Section 41 (f) of the Indian Factories Act XII of 1911, as amended up to date, and sentencing him to pay a fine of Rs. 20. The applicant is the manager of a concern called Gurhal-Ghar in which jaggery is manufactured from sugar-cane. There is an engine in a separate walled room and outside it are machines called crushers for extraction of juice from sugar-cane and the juice is then pumped through pipes to a shed in which it is stored in pans for boiling. All these buildings are in the same compound surrounded by a fence. Three men were employed on the engine, fourteen on the crushers and thirty-seven worked in the shed where the pans are. The building has been registered under the Indian Factories Act and the prosecution arose owing to a complaint from the Assistant Factory Inspector, who on visiting the premises found that the engine was not properly fenced.

(2.) The main contention put forward by Mr. Kane who appears for the applicant is that this Gurhal-Ghar is not a factory as defined in the Indian Factories Act, and that, therefore, Section 18 which relates to the fencing of machinery does not apply to it. " Factory" is defined as follows in Section 2:- (3) "factory" means- (a) any premises wherein, or within the precincts of which, on any one day in the year not less than twenty persona are simultaneously employed and steam, water or other mechanical power or electrical power is used in aid of any manufacturing process.

(3.) It is now argued that as only three persons were employed on the engine and fourteen on the crushers and the remaining thirty-seven in the shed in which the pans are, and as the engine shed and the latter shed are separate buildings, there were not as many as twenty persona simultaneously employed on the premises or within the precincts within the meaning of this definition.