SATANJI KOER Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN our opinion this Rule must be discharged. It is not suggested on the part of the prosecution that the petitioner in this case harboured any one who had escaped from lawful custody, but it is maintained that he harboured or concealed a person in respect of whom a public servant had made an order that he should be apprehended for an offence. The findings of the lower Court show that there was an order for apprehension of the particular person. Further it is manifest that the order for his apprehension was because he had committed an offence. If he had not committed an offence there would have been no order for his apprehension and the offence as the causa sine qua non of his apprehension. That seems to me to satisfy the expression "order the person to be apprehended for an offence" in Section 216 of the INdian Penal Code.

(2.) THEN it is said that it must be an offence in respect of which punishment has not been inflicted, and for that, reliance is placed on the latter part of section in which we find the word "punishable" used in reference to the offence. But that is merely for the purpose of describing particular classes of offences in relation to which the punishment indicated in the section is to be inflicted, and, it does not indicate that in a particular case the offence must have been punished. It might as well be urged that it would be wrong to say that a man has been punished for an offence which is punishable in a particular manner. In my opinion this argument, though ingenious, cannot be sustained.