EMPEROR Vs. NARAIN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The respondent Narain Kachi was sentenced by a Magistrate in Agra to rigorous imprisonment for a period of one month under the provisions of Section 236(1), Cantonments Act, for importuning certain British soldiers to the commission of sexual immorality. He appealed to the Sessions Judge who ac- quitted him upon a point of law. The Section under which the respondent was convicted is in the following terms: Whoever in a cantonment loiters for the purpose of prostitution or importunes any person to the commission of sexual immorality shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to one month or with fine which may extend to Rs. 200.

(2.) The charge against the respondent was that he had approached certain soldiers and had offered to supply to them a girl for Rs. 2 or a boy for Re. 1. The Sessions Judge held that nobody could be convicted under the section unless he was loitering for the purpose of prostituting himself or importuned any person to the commission of sexual immorality with himself. The learned Judge said: It appears from the scheme of the, section that the person importuning any person to the commission of sexual immorality must be the boy or the girl who offers himself or herself for sexual immorality and not a third person who only acts as a go-between.

(3.) In his opinion the combination of loitering with importuning clearly showed that the person punishable must be the object of the sexual immorality. A Bench of the Bombay High Court in Emperor V/s. Maridas 1926 Bom 227 said that it would seem to be desirable that a pimp should be liable to be prosecuted just as well as the woman who was to be the subject of prostitution. We are in agreement with this view and we do not think that there is anything in the wording of the section which justifies the conclusion to which the learned Sessions Judge came. The section does not say that the person must loiter for the purpose of his or her own prostitution or must importune another to the commission of sexual immorality with the person so importuning. Even if the charge was one of loitering it does not seem to us that it would necessarily be true that nobody could be prosecuted unless he or she was loitering for the purpose of prostituting his or her own person. We can conceive of a case where a woman loiters as a decoy so that she may give the impression that she is loitering for the purpose of prostitution intending to take any man who accosts her to some other house of ill fame where he may have intercourse i with some other woman. We are not however in this case to consider whether a person who loiters for the purpose of the prostitution of others is liable to punishment. We are concerned with the second part of the section and it is perfectly clear that there is nothing in the wording which says that the person importuning must importune to the commission of sexual immorality with himself or herself. "We cannot read into the section words which are not there.