CHANNING ARNOLD Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) By leave granted by His Majesty in Council this appeal is brought from a conviction of and sentence upon the appellant by the Chief Court of Lower Bu ma, pronounced on the 19th October 1913. The charge was one of defamation or criminal libel, and the prosecution was laid under the 21st chapter of the Indian Penal Code. In that chapter Section 499 gives a definition of defamation, and sets forth categorically no fewer than ten exceptions, any one of which forms a proper defence to the charge. By Section 500 it is provided that the punishment of defamation shall be " simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both."

(2.) The appellant was charged with having defamed Mr. G.P. Andrew, Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate of Mergui, by the publication of two articles in the Burma Critic, a Rangoon newspaper, on the 28th April 1912. These articles were entitled "A Mockery of British Justice."

(3.) Mr. Arnold has had experience as a journalist; and it appears from the proceedings that he was at one time the chief editor of the Rangoon Times. He ceased to be editor of that journal in the end of September 1911, and in January 1912 he was registered as one of the proprietors and the editor of the Burma Critic. The articles bear witness to the writer s possession of great invective and declamatory power; and it ought to be said at once that his motives have not been challenged except in so far as that is necessarily involved in the contention that he published serious libels and did so otherwise than in good faith.