PICHAI PILLAI Vs. BALASUNDARA MUDALY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These five Criminal Revision Petitions relate to prosecutions instituted against Police officers for offences alleged to have been committed while acting or purporting to act in the discharge of their official duty, and they raise the general question whether the previous sanction of the Local Government should have been obtained under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code. We have to decide what is the correct construction to be placed upon the words " any public servant who is not removable from his office save by or with the sanction of a Local Government or some higher authority."

(2.) In Sheik Abdul Kadir Saheb V/s. Emperor (1916) 1 M.W.N. 384, Coutts Trotter, J. (after Chief Justice) had to deal with this point in a case in which the Chairman of a Union Panchayat was prosecuted for the offence of Criminal Breach of Trust. The learned Judge found that The power of removal was vested in the Local Government by Section 126 of the Madras Local Boards Act and that by Section 160 of the same Act the Local Government were empowered to delegate this power and in fact by notification had delegated it to the President of the District Board.

(3.) Upon this he observes: Now it is argued in the first place that by that act of delegation on the part of the Government the accused became ipso facto removed from the category of persons who are not removeable from office without the sanction of the Government of India or the Local Government; because it is argued that by the act of delegation he becomes removeable by a third authority, namely, the Presidency of the District,Board. To my mind that argument is unsound and, in my opinion, the delegation by the Local Government of its power to a special officer only means that the Local Government performs that act itself through the medium of a particular officer as the channel through which it is done; and it is an ordinary case of qui facit per alium facit per se. It is no doubt done in accordance with the delegation, but nevertheless it remains the act of the Local Government. I am therefore of opinion that the accused has established that he is within the meaning of this section a public servant not removable from his office without the sanction of the Local Government.