SITARAM KUNBI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) 1. The applicant for revision is Sitaram Kunbi, a malguzar of the Betul District. On 3rd September 1927 he purchased one tola of opium at the licensed shop at Multai. A Sub-Inspector of Excise was informed of this and accosted him immediately afterwards and he admitted what he had done without any attempt at concealment or evasion. The reduction of the amount of opium which a person may have in his possession &t one time from one tola to half a tola was made on 2nd November 1926, just ten months before. Sitaram Patel was found guilty on his own confession of an offence punishable under Clause (e), Section 9, Opium Act, and ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 50, and he has applied for revision of this order.

(2.) THE conviction is undoubtedly correct. The Magistrate has held that the accused was unaware of the change made in the law tea months earlier, and was inveigled by the man in the shop to buy more than half a tola, but his own statement in the case shows that it was not so. Anyhow ignorance of the law is not a ground for acquittal for a breach of it, according to the principle usually wrongly stated by saying that ignorance of the law is no excuse or that everybody must be presumed to know the law. Ignorance of the law is ordinarily very much of an excuse, as it leads to a reduction of the sentence though it cannot lead to an acquittal.

(3.) AS to the sentence : a fine of Rs. 50 is obviously too heavy a punishment under the circumstances. In the Magistrate's view that the patel sinned in ignorance it is monstrous, but anyhow it is four or five times as heavy as the punishment ordinarily inflicted in such a case. It does not appear, however, that the amount of the fine was based of the consideration that to pay Rs. 50 would be no harder for Sitaram Patel than paying Rs. 10 would be for a poorer man. On the contrary, it is more than probable that the Magistrate refrained from inflicting a smaller fine because he was aware that a person in that position would regard it as a much heavier penalty, on account of the obloquy and ridicule to which it would expose him.