EMPEROR Vs. BAI SAMRATH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We think that this is quite plainly a bad conviction. The accused, who, according to the facts found, is one of two joint owners of a shop, put her lock on the shop. Without her agreement the other joint owner had leased the shop to the complainant; and the complainant has accused the present applicant that she has wrongfully restrained him because she has put her lock on to the shop and thereby prevented him from entering the shop.

(2.) There are two observations I should like to make on this case. The first is that even if the action of the applicant could be construed as coming within any of the penal provisions of the Penal Code, yet the matter in dispute is so plainly a civil dispute that I think any Magistrate would have been not only justified but would have been acting in a very desirable way, had he dismissed such a complaint as being an abuse of the process of a criminal Court. But on the facts here proved it cannot, it seems to me-and this is my second observation-be truly said that what the applicant has done can possibly-come within any of the penal provisions of the Code. She has affixed her lock to a house of which she is the joint owner, and how that can conceivably amount to wrongfully restraining a supposed tenant, who is not her tenant, from entering the shop, I cannot understand.

(3.) I am quite clear, therefore, in my own mind, that this conviction must be set aside and that the fine, if paid, must be ordered to be refunded. Shah, J.