တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏ဥပဒေပညာနှင့်အရေးအသား။

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏ဥပဒေပညာနှင့်အရေးအသား

1948 BLR 91 ( 97 )

APPELLATE CRIMINAL.

Before Mr. Justice E Maung.

MA MYA SEIN (APPLICANT)

                     V.

THE KING (RESPONDENT).*

1947 September 23.

စီရင်ထုံးကို[ ၄-၁၁-၁၉၄၆ ]နေ့တွင်ဟိုက်ကုတ်လွှတ်တော်တရားဝန်ကြီးဖြစ်သောဦးဧမောင်[ နောက်ပိုင်းတွင်ဒေါက်တာဧမောင် ]ကတရားဝန်ကြီးလုပ်သက်တနှစ်မပြည့်မီ[ ၂၃-၉-၁၉၄၇ ]နေ့တွင်ချမှတ်သောစီရင်ချက်တွင်ထုံးပြုသောစီရင်ထုံးဖြစ်သည်။

အမှုတွင်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

[ ရာဇဝတ်ကျင့်ထုံးဥပဒေကို၁၉၂၃ခုနှစ်တွင်ပြင်ဆင်ပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း၌ရဲအရာရှိတဦးဦးကစာဖြင့်ရေးသားသောအစီရင်ခံစာတွင်အကြောင်းခြင်းရာများသည်ရဲအရေးပိုင်သောပြစ်မှုမြောက်သည်ဖြစ်စေ၊ရဲအရေးမပိုင်သောပြစ်မှုမြောက်သည်ဖြစ်စေ၊ရာဇဝတ်တရားသူကြီးကပုဒ်မ၁၉၀( ၁ )( ခ )အရ၊ရာဇဝတ်မှုကိုအရေးယူစီရင်နိုင်သည်။

Held: That after the amendment of the Code of Criminál Procedure in 1923, a Magistrate under s. 190 (b) of the Code can take cognizance of an offence upon a report in writing of such facts made by any Police Officer whether the facts constitute a cognizable or non-cognizable offence.

Bhairab Chandra Burka v. Emperor, 46 Cal. 807; The Public Prosecutor v.Ratnavelu Chetty, I.L.R. 49.Mad. 525, followed. ]

[ ပြည့်တန်ဆာနှိပ်ကွပ်ရေးအက်ဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၁၅အရဌာနအုပ်သို့မဟုတ်ရဲအုပ်ထက်ရာထူးမြင့်သောအရာရှိကသာပုဒ်မ၁၁အရပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်ခြင်းရှိမရှိသိရှိရန်ပြည့်တန်ဆာအိမ်ကိုဝင်နိုင်ခွင့်ရှိသည်။ယခုအမှုမှာရဲအုပ်ကဝင်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။သို့သော်ရာဇဝတ်တရားသူကြီးကရဲတိုင်စာအရအမှုကိုအရေးယူခြင်းဖြစ်လျှင်ဥပဒေနှင့်မညီဘဲထိုသို့ဝင်ရုံမျှနှင့်အမှုမှာပျက်ပြယ်ခြင်းမရှိ။ 

Under s. 15 of the Suppression of Brothels Act only, a Police Station Officer or officer higher than a Sub-Inspector was entitled to enter a brothel for ascertaining whether an offence under s. 11 has been committed. 

In the present case the entry was by a Sub-Inspector but such illegal entry does not vitiate the proceedings if the Magistrate takes cognizance under the report of the Police.

Emperor v. Chandri Bawoo, 26 Bom. L.R. 1225, dissented from.

Maung San Myin v. King-Emperor, I.L.R.7 Ran. 771; Chea Hum Htive v. King-Emperor, I.L.R 11 Ran, 107; Aung Kim Sein v. The King, (1941) Ran. 552, followed. ]

[ ပြည့်တန်ဆာနှိပ်ကွပ်ရေးအက်ဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၁၁( က )သည်ပြည့်တန်ဆာအိမ်တည်ထောင်ရာ၌တည်ထောင်သူ၊စီမံအုပ်ချုပ်သူ၊သို့မဟုတ်အားပေးကူညီသူကိုပြစ်ဒဏ်ထားသောပုဒ်မဖြစ်သည်။တိုင်စာတွင်ထိုသို့တစုံတရာစွပ်စွဲခြင်းမရှိသည့်ပြင်တိုင်စာ၌မိန်းမအချို့ပြည့်တန်ဆာလုပ်သည်ဟုသာမန်အဆိုပြုရုံမျှပါရှိသဖြင့်ဤအက်ဥပဒေအရမည်သည့်ပြစ်မှုမျှမပေါ်ပေါက်ချေ။

S. 11 (a) of the Suppression of Brothels Act penalizes a person who keeps or manages orassists in the management of a brothel-as the report does not make any such allegations and the report simply suggests prostitution by some women, no offence under the Act is disclosed. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၉၃အစပိုင်းတွင်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းအစချီသည်-

[ This objection was rejected by the learned trial Magistrate and Ma Mya Sein has come up in revision to this Court. 

After hearing her counsel as to admission, I considered it desirable in the interests of jusfice to have all the accused persons before this Court and directed the opening of revision proceedings in respect of the other three accused, namely, Ah Mya, Ma Than Kyi and Ma Khin Kyi. 

I have since heard Mr. Leong for Ma Mya Sein and U Tin Maung, Government Advocate, on behalf of the Crown. 

Ah Mya and Ma Khin Kyi, who appeared in person, had nothing to say. 

Ma Than Kyi was absent at the hearing though she had been served. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၉၃တွင်အယူခံတရားလို၏တရားလွှတ်တော်ရှေ့နေ Mr. Leong တင်ပြလျှောက်လဲချက်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြထားသည်-

[ Mr. Leong's sheet anchor was a decision of the Bombay High Court in Emperor v. Chandri Bawoo (1). 26 Bom. L.R. 1225. He also cites a decision of this Court in Jagdeo Panday v. N. C. Hill (2) (1938) Ran. 150. in support . 

His contention , if I understand him right, is that the report in writing   in this case, being made in respect of an offence not cognizable by the police (the maximum penalty provided for an offence under the Act being imprisonment for one year or a fine of Rs. 1,000), the police could not investigate into the offence except under the direction of a Magistrate. 

He further says that under section 15 of the Act, only a police officer in charge of a police station or an officer holding rank higher than that of a Sub-Inspector of Police is competent to make an enquiry but that in this case the officer who entered into the premises for the purpose of ascertaining whether an offence under section 11 of the Act has been committed or was being committed, was only of the rank of a Sub-Inspector of Police, and that the illegal entry would, as was laid down in similar circumstances in the Bombay case, vitiate the subsequent prosecution. ]

[ sheet anchor = မှီခိုအားထားလျှင် ]

[ His contention, if I understand him right ]ဆိုသောစကားပလ္လင်ခံရေးသည့်အရေးအသားမျိုး၊ထိုကဲ့သို့အရေးအသားအမှန်မျိုးကိုစီရင်ထုံးများတွင်မတွေ့ရတော့။

တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကအောက်ပါအတိုင်းအကြောင်းပြသည်-

[ Section 190 (b) of the Criminal Procedure Code allows a Magistrate to take cognizance of any offence upon a report in writing of such facts made by any police officer. 

Prior to the amendment of this section in 1923, clause (6) read: " Upon the police report of such facts." 

There was then a conflict of judicial interpretation on the words " the police report", certain Courts taking the view that the police report must rèfer necessarily to cases where the police can take cognizance and other Courts the view that the police report could be in respect of non-cognizable offences as well. 

To clear up the matter the amendment was made by Act VIII of 1923 and it has been consistently held since that the effect of the amendment is to enable a Magistrate to take cognizance on a report in wiiting made by a police officer, whether the facts constitute a cognizable offence or a non-cognizable one. 

The matter is so very obvious that authorities are hardly necessary.

I need only mention two decisions here in support :

Bhairab Chandra Barua v. Emperor (1) 46 Cal. 807. and The Public Prosecutor v. Ratnavel Chetty (2), I .L.R. 49 Mad. 525.

It is therefore against this background that I have to consider the applicability of the Bombay decision in Emperor v. Chandri Bawoo (3) 26 Bom. L.R. 1225. to the facts of the present case. 

At page 1230 of that report Marten J. said :

"I am certainly not inclined to stretch a point and hold that the arrest, though illegally made, did not affect the powers of the Magistrate subsequently to hear the case." ]

အယူခံတရားလို၏ရှေ့နေကိုးကားသော 26 Bom. L.R. 1225. စီရင်ထုံးကိုစာမျက်နှာ၉၄နှင့်၉၅တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆက်လက်စိစစ်သည်-

[ Section 10 (1) of the Bombay Prevention of Prostitution Act corresponds in essence to section 14 of the Burma Act. 

The arrest in the Bombay case was made by an unauthorized police officer without the necessary complaint being made, to him and the arrest was therefore, ir that case, an illegal arrest. 

It is true that in the case before me also, if the entry into the premises was made by U Nyunt Din and his subordinates only, there was in the party no one superior in rank to that of a Sub-Inspector of Police. 

The entry therefore would be an illegal one and if l can agree with Marten J. that an illegal entry would vitiate a subsequent prosecution, the application of Ma Mya Sein must be allowed.

In support of his view that an illegal arrest would vitiate the consequent prosecution, the learned Judge said at page 1229 of the report :

" It is a new Act, and, as I read s. 10, it has been deliberately inserted so as to afford reasonable protection to the public. An ordinary police constable is not to be allowed to arrest any female in a street unless a complaint has been made to him of her conduct; and unless he himself sees the offence committed, and he cannot discover her name and address. Or, on the other hand, the constable must be athorized by the Commissioner of Police by a special order to effect an arrest of this description, and one can quite understand the reason for this, viz. to ensure that mistakes should not be made and that some innocent woman should not be dragged off to prison.or put under arrest in the public street by any ordinary police constable. One knows that mistakes of that kind by the police in England have led to strong public criticism. I remember in particular many years ago one case at Cambridge where a mistake of that nature by the University Proctors led to interference by Parliament and a public enquiry, as a result of which the jurisdiction of the University authorities to arrest women in the streets on an accusation of soliciting was taken away from them altogether." ]

26 Bom. L.R. 1225. စီရင်ထုံးကိုစိစစ်ပြီးအောက်ပါအတိုင်းအကြောင်းပြဆုံးဖြတ်ခြင်းသည်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏စီရင်ချက်ရေးသားသည့်အနုပညာကိုထင်ဟပ်သည်-

[ With respect, I find myself unable to agree with Marten. 

A Judge has to administer the law as he finds it: 

He may not stretch the law either in favour of the accused or in favour of the prosecution, upon grounds of public morals or public expediency. 

It is for the Legislature to say, if it is so advised, that to ensure that mistakes are not made no police officer below a certain rank should be competent to institute criminal proceedings. 

This in the case of the Burma Act the Legislature has not done. 

The decisions of this Court in Maung San Myin v. King-Emperor (1), I.L.R. 7. Ran. 771. Chwa Hum Htive v. King-Emperor (2) I.L.R. 11 Ran. 107. and Aung Kim Sein v. The King (3) I.L.R. (1941) Ran. 552. are clearly against the view taken by Marten J. in the Bombay case. 

Fawcett, J. in the same case proceeded on the application of the special provisions of the Bombay City Police Act. 

This Act is not before me but at page 1231 of the report Fawcett J. stated "that valid report by a police officer in the town of Bombay of the kind contemplated by clause (b) of section 190 can oly be made ( i )in the case of a non-coguizable oftence and ( i i ) when it contains information of a cognizable offence which he has been authorized by a Presidency Magistrate to investigate." 

There is no provision in the Burma Act to correspond.

In these circumstances, I consider that the application of Ma Mya Sein to be premature and accordingly reject it.]

ဥပဒေကိုအထက်ပါအတိုင်းပိုင်ပိုင်နိုင်နိုင်ဆုံးဖြတ်ခြင်းမျိုးမတွေ့ရသလောက်ဖြစ်သည်။

မှတ်သားသင့်သောဥပဒေပညာနှင့်အရေးအသားဖြစ်သည်။

တရားဝန်ကြီးသည်ဥပဒေပြုအဖွဲ့ကိုဆန့်ကျင်ရန်မဟုတ်။

သို့ဖြစ်၍တရားဝန်ကြီးက[ if it is so advised ]ဟုစကားပလ္လင်ခံပြီး[ that to

ensure that mistakes are not made no police officer below a certain rank should be competent to institute criminal proceedings. ]ဥပဒေပြုလုပ်သည်ကိုအရိပ်အမြွက်ဖော်ပြခြင်းသည်ပညာရှင်ပီသကြောင်းထင်ဟပ်သည်။

တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကစီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၉၆နှင့်၉၇၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆက်လက်သုံးသပ်ပြီးစီရင်ချက်ကိုအဆုံးသတ်သည်-

[ Coming to the case of the three other women Ah Mya, Ma Than Kyi and Ma Khin Kyi, who have each been charged with an offence under section 11 (a) of the Suppression of Brothels Act, I do nöt see any offence either under that section or any other provisions. of the Act, made out against them on the facts stated in the report in writing before the trial Court. 

The Court taking cognizance, whether under clause (a) or clause (b) or clause (c) of section 190 of the Criminal Procedure Code must proceed either on a complaint or a report or information of facts which constitute an offence. 

The learned Magistrate had before him a report stating certain facts as far as these persons are concerned and the facts alleged against them were that Ah Mya was tound with an unknown Indian in a bedroom, Maung Tun Lwin and Ma Than Kyi in another bedroom and Ma Khin Kyi and a Chinaman in a third, and that on enquiry the three men said that each of them was in the company of the respective woman for the purpose of sexual intercourse having paid Rs. 60, Rs. 25 and Rs. 30 respectively for the services of the woman.

Accepting these facts to be true, as I must for the purpose of the revision proceedings in hand, what offence do they disclose? 

They certainly do not disclose an offence under section 11 (a) of the Suppression of Brothels Act which penalizes a person who keeps or manages or assists in the management of a brothel. 

Neither do the facts bring the women under the provisions of section 4 of the Act. 

There is no question here of soliciting or molesting for the purpose of prostitution. 

There is no question also at these three women attracting or endcavouring to attract the attention of any one for the purpose of prostitution.

All that the facts would establish are that these three women are prostitutes and that they were present in the premises entered by the police officers carrying on the business of prostitution. 

It may or may not be desirable to make prostitution penal. 

On that I say nothing ; it is beyond my province as a Judge. 

But as the law now stands, prostitution as such is not a criminal offence and these three women against whom no fact has been alleged which would constitute a criminal offence, must be discharged from the case. 

I accordingly direct their discharge.]

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