တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏စံလက်ရာစီရင်ထုံး။

 ဆရာကြီးဦးမြသင်ကြားပို့ချချက်များ

တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏စံလက်ရာစီရင်ထုံး။

——————————————-

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလွတ်လပ်ရေးရပြီးနောက်သုံးလအကြာတွင်တောခိုမှုများဖြစ်ပွါးခဲ့သည်။

ရောင်စုံသူပုန်ဟူသောစကားဖြစ်ထွန်းလာသည်။

အဖမ်းအဆီးများလည်းများလာရာရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်လျှောက်ထားမှုအများအပြားပေါ်လာသည်။

အခြားစာချွန်တော်လျှောက်ထားမှုများလည်းအထိုက်အလျောက်ရှိလာရာ၊၁၉၄၈နှင့်၁၉၄၉ခုနှစ်စီရင်ထုံးများ၊စီရင်ချက်များတွင်စာချွန်တော်အကြောင်းစီရင်ထုံးများနေရာယူခဲ့သည်။

တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်ကစာချွန်တော်များနှင့်စပ်လျဉ်းသောစီရင်ချက်အများအပြားကိုရေးခဲ့သည်။

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စာချွန်တော်ဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေသည်အင်္ဂလန်နိုင်ငံဥပဒေတွင်မြစ်ဖျားခံသည်။ 

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလွတ်လပ်ရေးစတင်ရစဉ်ကနိုင်ငံတော်မငြိမ်မသက်သဖြင့်ဖမ်းဆီးမှုများရှိခဲ့ရာ၊ရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်ထုတ်ဆင့်ပေးရန်၊တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တွင်လျှောက်ထားမှုအများအပြားရှိခဲ့သည်။

၁၀ - ၅ - ၁၉၄၈ နေ့၌ချမှတ်သောစီရင်ချက်၌-

1948 BLR ( S C ) 199 ( 213 )

SUPREME COURT.

G. N. BANERJI (APPLICANT)

                    V.

THE SUPERINTENDENT, INSEIN JAIL ANNEXE, INSEIN (RESPONDENT).*

[On appeal from the High Court.]

Present: SIR BA U, Chief Justice of the Union of Burma, E MAUNG, J., and KYAW MYINT, J., of the Supreme Court.

1948 May 10

အမှုတွင်ရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်အကြောင်းကိုစုဆောင်းရှာဖွေကာရှင်းပြရာ၌တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကရှေးခေတ်အသုံးအနှုန်းများနှင့်ပညာရပ်ဆန်မှုများကင်းသော[ shorn of antiquities and technicalities ]ဟူသောစကားအသုံးအနှုန်းဖြင့်ရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်ထုတ်ဆင့်ခြင်းဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေကိုရှင်းရှင်းလင်းလင်းရေးပြသည်။

(အင်္ဂလိပ်-မြန်မာအဘိဓာန်စာမျက်နှာ-၁၄၃၂)( ၁၉၄၇ ခုနှစ်ဖွဲ့စည်းအုပ်ချုပ်ပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၂၁၃( ၃ )၏ရှင်းလင်းချက်အရဆိုပါက technicalities ကိုလုပ်ငန်းဆောင်တာနည်းနာများဟုဘာသာပြန်ရန်ဖြစ်သည်။ 

1948 BLR ( S C ) 199 ( 213 ) စီရင်ထုံးသည်၊တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်၏စံလက်ရာဖြစ်သည်။

အင်္ဂလန်နိုင်ငံတွင်အုပ်စိုးသူမင်းကတိုင်းသူပြည်သားတို့အားအကြောင်းမဲ့ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ရာမှတရားရုံးကရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်ထုတ်ဆင့်လွှတ်ခဲ့ပုံပေါ်သည်။

စာအုပ်ကြီးဆန်သောလုပ်ထုံးလုပ်နည်းများရှိခဲ့ပုံပေါ်သည်။

ဒေါက်တာဧမောင်ကဘိုးတော်ဘုရားခေတ်ကစာအုပ်ကြီးဆန်သောလုပ်ထုံးလုပ်နည်းများကိုဖယ်ရှားကာရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်ထုတ်ဆင့်ခြင်းဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေကိုရှင်းလင်းစေခဲ့သည်။ 

[ ရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်ဆိုသည်မှာတရားဥပဒေနှင့်မညီသောဖမ်းဆီးခြင်း၊ထိန်းသိမ်းခြင်းမပြုအောင်တိုင်းသူပြည်သားများ၏လွတ်လပ်ရေးကိုအကာအကွယ်ပေးရာ၌သာမန်လုပ်ထုံးလုပ်နည်းအဖြစ်အသုံးပြုသောရှေးဟောင်းအများနှင့်စပ်ဆိုင်သောဥပဒေအမိန့်ဖြစ်သည်။ဤအမိန့်သည်လျှောက်ထားသူ၏လွတ်လပ်ခွင့်ကိုချက်ချင်းအဆုံးအဖြတ်ပေးနိုင်သည်။ဤအမိန့်မှာတရားမကြီးမှု၌ဆောင်ရွက်သည့်အမိန့်မဟုတ်၊ထိန်းသိမ်းခံရသူကလျှောက်ထားသောအကျဉ်းနည်းစစ်ဆေးမှုမှအမိန့်ဖြစ်သည်။တရားရုံးကရှောင်ဖယ်ခြင်း၊ကြန့်ကြာခြင်းကိုကာကွယ်ရန်အမြဲဦးတည်ကြိုးပမ်းသည်။ရှေးဟောင်းနည်းစနစ်များကိုပယ်၍၎င်းတို့ကိုလည်းမထိခိုက်စေသောနည်းစနစ်ဖြင့်စိစစ်နိုင်ရန်ပြည်ထောင်စုဖွဲ့စည်းအုပ်ချုပ်ပုံဥပဒေကတရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်ကိုအပ်နှင်းထားကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းပြဆိုသည်-

[ The writ of habeas corpus is an ancient Common Law writ used as the normal procedure for protecting the liberty of the subject against unlawful arrests and detainments.

It enables the immediate determination of the right to the applicant’s freedom. 

It is not a proceeding in a suit but a summary application by the person detained. 

The efforts of the Court are invariably directed to prevent erasion and delay. 

The exercise of this check, whole and unimpaired but shorn of antiquated technicalities, has been entrusted to the Supreme Court by the Constitution of the Union.

Liversidge v. Sir John Anderson, (1942) A.C. 206, Greene v. Secretary of State for Home Affairs, (1942) A.C. 284 at pp. 301-3; Secretary of State for Home Affairs v. O'Brien, (1923) A.C. 603 at p. 609, referred to. ]

[ ၁၉၄၇ခုနှစ်၊ပြည်သူပိုင်ပစ္စည်းကာကွယ်ရေးအက်ဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၇(၂)အရ၁၉၄၇ခုနှစ်ဒီဇင်ဘာလ၃၁ရက်နေ့စွဲပါအမိန့်ကြော်ငြာစာအမှတ်၁၃၁ဖြင့်ဘုရင်ခံကပြည်သူပိုင်ပစ္စည်းကာကွယ်ရေးကော်မတီအားပုဒ်မ၇(၂)အရထိခိုက်နစ်နာသောပြုလုပ်မှုများကိုကျူးလွန်သည်ဟုမသင်္ကာသူများကိုဝရမ်းမပါဘဲဖမ်းဆီးနိုင်သည့်အာဏာပေးထားသည်။

ကော်မတီ၏နာယကကအမိန့်တခုကိုလက်မှတ်ရေးထိုး၍လုံခြုံရေးမှုးအားပေးအပ်ရာလုံခြုံရေးမှုးက၁၉၄၈ခုနှစ်၊ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ၁၈ရက်နေ့တွင်လျှောက်ထားသူကိုဖမ်းဆီးလိုက်သည်။

၁၉၄၈ခုနှစ်၊မတ်လ၁ရက်နေ့တွင်နိုင်ငံတော်အစိုးရဒုတိယအတွင်းဝန်လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးထားသည့်ပုဒ်မ၇(၃)အရထုတ်သည်ဆိုသောအမိန့်တရပ်ဖြင့်လျှောက်ထားသူအား၁၉၄၈ခုနှစ်၊ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ၁၈ရက်နေ့ကစ၍ခြောက်လထိန်းသိမ်းထားရန်ညွှန်ကြားသည်။

ရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်လျှောက်ထားရာ-

ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်။   ။ပုဒ်မ၇(၂)အရအာဏာကိုကော်မတီအားမအပ်နှင်းနိုင်။ကော်မတီသည်ဖမ်းဆီးနိုင်သောအရာရှိမဟုတ်။ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းမှာကိုယ်ထိလက်ရောက်ပြုလုပ်ရသောအမှုဖြစ်သည်။လူအများပါဝင်သောကော်မတီသည်ထိတွေ့ဖမ်းဆီးနိုင်သူမဟုတ်။အရာရှိသည်သင်္ကာမကင်းဖြစ်ရမည်၊ကော်မတီမှာထိုသို့မပြုနိုင်။ယေဘုယျစကားရပ်များအက်ဥပဒေပုဒ်မ၂(၄၄)ကိုညွှန်းသည်ဟု၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

Under s. 7 (2), Public Property Protection Act, 1947, by Notification 131, rated 31st December 1947, the Governor purported to authorize the Public Property Protection Committee to arreet without warrant, persons coming under s. 7 (2) of the Act suspected of having committed prejudicial acts. 

An order signed by the Chairmah of the Cömmittee was delivered to an Inspector of Police, wbo arrested applicant on 18th February 1948. 

On 1st March 1948 an order purporting to be under s. 7 (3) authenticated by a Deputy Secretary to Government, directed detention of applicant for six months from 18th February 1948.

On an application for a writ of habeas corpus, 

Held: Authority under s. 7 (2) cannot be invested in a Committee and the Committee is not an officer who can arrest. 

The act of arrest is a physical act and a Committee of several persons cannot touch or arrest.

The officer has to entertain a suspicion and a Committee cannot do so.

General Clauses Act, s. 2 (44), referred to.]

[ ထပ်မံဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်။   ။ဖမ်းဆီးနိုင်သောအာဏာသုံးစွဲခြင်းကိုကိုယ်စားလည်မလွှဲနိုင်။ရာဇဝတ်ကျင့်ထုံးပုဒ်မ၅၆နှင့်၆၅မှာကဲ့သို့တခြားလူတဦးမှတဆင့်ဖမ်းဆီးနိုင်ခွင့်ကိုပုဒ်မ၇(၂)၌ပြဌာန်းထားခြင်းမရှိ။ထို့ပြင်အဖမ်းခံရသူမှာလည်းသက်ဆိုင်သောအရာရှိအားကျေနပ်အောင်ပြောဆိုနိုင်သောအခွင့်အရေးဆုံးရှုံးသည်။အထက်အရာရှိများကမိမိတို့ကိုယ်တိုင်ဖမ်းဆီးရမည်ဆိုလျှင်အုပ်ချုပ်ရေးယန္တရားလည်ပတ်နိုင်မည်မဟုတ်ဆိုသည့်ပြဿနာကိုကျေးတော်မျိုးတဦး၏လွတ်လပ်ခွင့်ထက်ပို၍အလေးမပေးနိုင်။

တရားသူကြီးများ၏တာဝန်မှာဥပဒေပါစကားရပ်များကိုအရှိအတိုင်းကောက်ယူ၍အများသိရှိသောအဓိပ္ပာယ်၊ဆီလျော်သောပြန်ဆိုမှုတို့ကိုသာပြုရသည်၊ဟာကွက်များကိုကုစားပေးရန်မဟုတ်ကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

Held further: The exercise of the power of arrest cannot be delegated.

There is no provision in s. 7 (2) to have the arrest effected through another, as in ss. 56 and 65 of Criminal Procedure Code. 

Further this deprives the person affected of an opportunity to satisfy the officer concerned. 

The question of administrative inconvenience involved in requiring high officers to arrest personally cannot out weigh the liberty of the subject.

Barnard v. Gorman, (1941) A.C. 378 at pp. 383-4, relied on.

The duty of Judges is only to take the words as they stand, give its natural meaning and appropriate construction, but not cure loopholes in a statute. ]

[ထပ်မံဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်။   ။ဖမ်းဆီးသောအရာရှိထံမှအစီရင်ခံစာရရှိရန်မှာပုဒ်မ၇(၅)အရဘုရင်ခံ၏အာဏာများမသုံးစွဲမီလိုက်နာရမည့်စည်းကမ်းချက်တရပ်ဖြစ်သည်။ဤအမှု၌မည်သည့်အစီရင်ခံစာမျှမရှိသဖြင့်ထပ်မံထုတ်သည့်အမိန့်မှာပျက်ပြယ်၍ဥပဒေနှင့်မညီချေ။အမိန့်ကိုကြည့်ရသည်မှာသမ္မတကကျေနပ်ခြင်းမဟုတ်ဘဲဦးသက်တင်ကသာကျေနပ်ခြင်းဖြစ်ဟန်တူသည်။ဥပဒေကသမ္မတကိုကျေနပ်စေရမည်ဟုဆိုသည်။အခြေခံအခွင့်အရေးများကိုစွက်ဖက်မှုပါဝင်သည့်စာရွက်စာတမ်းများကိုစီကုံးသည့်အခါပိုမိုတိကျသောစကားများကိုသုံးစွဲသင့်ကြောင်းအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဆုံးဖြတ်သည်-

Held also : The receipt of a report from the officer arresting is a condition to the exercise of the powers of the Governor under s. 7(5). 

As there was no report in this case, the further order is invalid and not in accordance with law.

King-Emperor v. Deshpande, 73 I.A. 144, applied.

From the order it appears that U Thet Tin was satisfied and not the President.

The Law contemplates that the President should be satisfied.

Greater precision of language should be exercised in drafting documents of great importance involving interference with fundamental rights. ]

—————————————-

1948 BLR ( S C ) 199 ( 213 )

SUPREME COURT.

G. N. BANERJI (APPLICANT)

                    V.

THE SUPERINTENDENT, INSEIN JAIL ANNEXE, INSEIN (RESPONDENT).*

[On appeal from the High Court.]

Present: SIR BA U, Chief Justice of the Union of Burma, E MAUNG, J., and KYAW MYINT, J., of the Supreme Court.

1948 May 10

အမှု၌၊တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်က၊စီရင်ထုံးခေါင်းစီးတွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းထုံးဖွဲ့သည်-

[ The efforts of the Court are invariably directed to prevent erasion and delay. 

The exercise of this check, whole and unimpaired but shorn of antiquated technicalities, has been entrusted to the Supreme Court by the Constitution of the Union. ]

တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကရှေ့တော်သွင်းစာချွန်တော်၏သမိုင်းကြောင်းနှင့်စပ်လျဉ်း၍အင်္ဂလန်နိုင်ငံစီရင်ထုံးများကိုကိုးကားပြီး၊စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၀၀၊၂၀၁၊၂၀၂၊၂၀၃၊၂၀၄တို့တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းအစချီဖော်ပြသည်-

[ The judgment of the Court was delivered by

E MAUNG, J.-- This is an application for directions in the nature of habeas corpus made by one G. N. Banerji, who had been committed to custody in Insein Jail for a period of six months from the 18th February 1948, under the provisions of subsection (5) read with sub-section (3) of section 7 of the Public Property Protection Act, 1947. 

The right which by the application it is sought to establish is the right of personal liberty guaranteed under Article 16 of the Constitution and it is said on behalf of the applicant that his incarceration in Insein Jail is one directed other than in due course of law and is accordingly illegal.

It would not be inappropriate here to state shortly the history, nature and scope of directions in the nature of habeas corpus and for such a statement it would be difficult to better the account given by such an eminent jurist as Lord Wright in Greene v. Secretary of State for Home Affairs (1) (1942) A.C. 284 at p. 301~3.:

"The writ of habeas corpus is an ancient common law writ, which from about the end of the sixteenth century or the earlier years of the seventeenth century came to be used as the normal procedure for protecting the liberty of the subject against unlawful arrests and detainments, in particular those by order of the executive. 

The history of this great remedial writ is succinctly but lucidly and accurately described in Sir William Holdsworth's History of English Law, vol. ix, 2nd ed., pp. 112 to 124.

I am merely concerned here with limited aspects. 

The common law adapted the old writ habeas corpus ad suscipiendum et reapiendum to the purpose of securing the subject's right to immunity from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment save by due process at law. 

In its earlier use, the writ had been from old days one of the procedural or mesne process writs. 

The right to freedom which the writ was directed to vindicate was said to be secured by the famous words of Magna Carta, a translation of which was embodied in the Petition of Right of 1628, 8. 3: 

' And where also by the statute called 'The Great Charter of the Liberties of England' it is declared and enacted that no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his Freehold or Liberties or his Free Customs, or be otitlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed but by the lawful judgment of his Peers or by the Law of the land.' 

This provision was reiterated in the Petition of Right because of the refusal of the Court of King's Bench to grant the writ in Darnel's case (1627 3 St. Tr. 1), where the return that the arrest was per speciale mandalum domini regis was held to be good return, which meant that a lawful cause of imprisonment was shown. 

We are told, no doubt with good reason, that the judges were influenced by the opinion that some degree of prerogative power was necessary to unable the Crown to deal with emergencies. 

The decision and arguments are analysed by Sir William Holdsworth, op. cit., vol. vi; 2nd ed., p. 34 and seg., But the Petition of Right declared such a cause of imprisonment to be unlawful. 

In the same way it was enacted, in the Act of 1640 abolishing the Star Charber, that any person committed or imprisoned by order of the Star Chamber or similar bodies should have his habeas corpus.

It is clear that the writ of habeas corpus deals with the machinery of justice, not the substantive law, except in so far as it can be said that the right to have the writ is itself part of substantive law. 

It is essentially a procedural writ, the object of which is to enforce a legal right. 

The writ is described as being a writ of right, not a writ of course. 

The applicant must show a prima facie case that be is unlawfully detained. 

He cannot get it as he would get an original writ for initiating an action, but if he shows a prima facie case he is entitled to it as of right.

The first question, therefore, in any habeas corpus proceeding is whether a prima facie case is shown by the applicant that his freedom is unlawfully interfered with, and the next step is to determine if the return is good and sufficient. 

A person unlawfully detaired is entitled as of course to obtain a writ of trespass, but an action of trespass or false imprisonment does not by itself secure the immediate or speedy release of the plaintiff, if he is still detained when be commences his action. 

As Littledale J. said in Leonard Watson's case (9 A & E, 731, 795), 'A party imprisoned bas two modes of proceeding, either by action for false imprisonment or by application for a habeas corpus. In an action for false imprisonment the defendant must prove his justification, if any and (except where allowed by express provision to give it under the general issue) he must also set forth the justification specially on the record. In the return to an habeas corpus no such minuteness of detail is necessary, nor in any instance that I can find has it been considered necessary to support the return by affidavit.' 

The incalculable value of habeas corpus is that it enables the immediate determination of the right to the applicant's freedom. 

On this aspect I may refer to the discussion by Lord Halsbury L.C. in Cox v. Hakes (15 App. Cas. 506, 514).

He said: 'In days of technical pleading no informality was allowed to prevent the substantial question of the right of the subject to his liberty being heard and determined. The right to an instant determination as to the lawfulness of an existing imprisonment, and the twofold quality of such determination that if favourable to liberty it was without appeal and if unfavourable it might be renewed until each jurisdiction bad in turn been exhausted have from time to time been pointed out by judges as securing in a marked and exceptional manner the personal freedom of the subject. It was not a proceeding in a suit but was a summary application by the person detained. No other party to that proceeding was necessarily before or represented before the judge except the person detaining and that person only because he had the custody of the applicant and was bound to bring him before the judge to explain and justity, if he could, the fact of imprisonment. It was, as Lord Coke described it, festinum remedium! When in the Habeas Corpus Act, 1816, the court was given power, if it sees fit, in the cases to which the Act applies, to inquire into the truth of the facts set out in the return, it was to be in a summary way, by affidavit or affirmation (s. 3). The efforts of the courts aided by the Legislature by means of the Acts of 1679 and 1816, have invariably been directed to prevent evasion and delay in the proceedings such as the alias and pluries writ or the cruder course of removing the person detained out of the jurisdiction and to make them effective in the shortest possible time. I have adverted to these features of the Habeas Corpus Act because I shall later have to deal with some questions of the procedure.

I have emphasized the use of the writ to secare freedom from arbitrary or unlawful arrest by the government, but besides these public occasions it was employed in connection with private arrests and detainments so that the writ applies to indefinitely wider and more various exigencies, indeed to any case whatever in which the liberty of the subject is unlawiully interfered with." 

Of the writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, Lord Birkenhead in Secretary of State for Home Affairs v. O'Brien (1) (1923) A.C. 603 at p. 609. says :

"It is perhaps the most important writ known to the constitutional law of England, affording as it does a swift and imperative remedy in all cases of illegal restraint or confinement.

It is of immemorial antiquity, an instance of its use occurring in the thirty-third year of Edward 1. 

It has through the ages been jealously maintained by Courts of Law as a check upon the illegal usurpation of power by the Executive at the cost of the liege."

The exercise of this check, whole and unimpaired in extent but shorn of antiquated technicalities in procedure, has by the Constitution of the Union been entrusted to this Court. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၀၅၊၂၀၆တွင်လျှောက်ထားသူ၏တရားလွှတ်တော်ရှေ့နေ P. K. Basu ၏တင်ပြလျှောက်လဲချက်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြထားသည်-

[ The learned counsel for the applicant contends that under section 7 (2) of the Public Property Protection Act, the Governor (now the President of the Union) is empowered to invest the authority to arrest without warrant to an officer only and not to an amorphous body like the Public Property Protection Committee and that accordingly Notification No. 131 of the 31st December 1947, Commerce and Supply Department, Legislation Branch, purporting to authorize the Public Property Protection Committee to effect the arrest without a warrant of persons coming within section 7 (2) of the Act is ultra vires of the Governor of Burma (now the President of the Union of Burma).]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၀၆၊၂၀၇တွင်၊ Attorney-General ဦးချန်ထွန်း၏တင်ပြလျှောက်လဲချက်ကိုအောက်ပါအတိုင်းဖော်ပြထားသည်-

[ The learned Attorney-General claims that the provisions of section 2 (44) of the General Clauses Act and Cecil Gray v. The Cantonment Committee of Poona (1) 34 Bom. 583., Vishnomal v. Court of Wards (2) (1928) Sind 76., Tewari V. Deputy Commissioner, Lucknow (3) 14 Luck. 351.and Ismail Mohamed Hajee v. The King(4) (1941) Ran. 536.are clear authorities for the view that the word "officer" may embrace a committee. 

We find it impossible to accept this contention. 

The General Clauses Act was enacted, as is clear from section 1 thereof, to advance brevity in drafting and certainty in interpretation of "all Acts, Regulations and Ordinances forming part of the law of Burma, whenever and by whatever authority they were passed or made.

" Section 2 provides definitions of words and is prefaced by the qualification " unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context"; and in section 2 (44) the word " person" is defined as including inter aliu a body of individuals whether incorporated or not. 

The learned Attorney-General's contention is that because an officer is defined judicially as a person employed to exercise to some extent and in certain circumstances the delegated functions of the Government, the term "officer" may embrace a committee which is a body of individuals not incorporated. 

This argument involves a fallacy. ]

တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်ကစီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၀၇တွင်အထက်ပါတင်ပြလျှောက်လဲချက်များအပေါ်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းအကြောင်းပြသည်-

[ It does not follow that because the word " person" is to be deemed to include a body corporate or a body of individuals not incorporated, in the interpretation of Acts and other statutory enactments, the same extended definition is to be applied in the interpretation of the word "person" in contexts other than in such Acts and enactments. 

Moreover, this argument overlooks the overriding qualification " unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context." What under section 7 (2) of the Act the Governor (now the President of the Union) is empowered to authorize is"to arrest without a warrant" and an arrest, as is clear from section 46 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, is a plysical act ; the person making the arrest is required actually to touch or to confine the body of the person to be arrested, unless there is submission to the custody by word or action. 

How would it be possible for a body incorporate, which has only a notional existence as a legal entity, to effect an arrest? 

How would a committee composed of several individuals exercise the physical act or arrest?

 Would all the members of the committee have to attend and each actually touch or confine the body of the person to be arrested ?

To say that all the members of the committee except one may delegate their functions to the remaining nember would not be an answer to the difficulty.

The committee has to entertain a suspicion as a preliminary to arrest and the entertainment of suspicion cannot possibly be delegated to one member of the committee by the rest thereof.

The decision in Ismail Mohamed Hajee v. The King (1) (1941) Ran. 536. is not relevant to the present case. 

The other decisions relied upon by the learned Attorney-General are in different collocations and cannot possibly be said to be in pari materia with the present case.

Moreover, these decisions are of doubtful validity in view of the provisions of sections 57 and 58 of the Municipal Act and sections 272 and 273 of the Cantonment Act. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၀၉တွင်၊Attorney-General ဦးချန်ထွန်း၏တင်ပြလျှောက်လဲချက်အပေါ်တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်က၊မဖြစ်နိုင်သည့်အကျိုးသက်ရောက်မှုများအပေါ်လျှောက်လဲခြင်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍အင်္ဂလန်နိုင်ငံစီရင်ထုံးတရပ်ကိုကိုးကားပြီး၊စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ-၂၁၀နှင့်၂၁၁၌အောက်ပါအတိုင်းအကြောင်းပြဆုံးဖြတ်ခြင်းသည်တရားဝန်ကြီး၏စီရင်ချက်ရေးသားသည့်အနုပညာကိုထင်ဟပ်သည်-

[ It is next contended by the learned Attorney-General that section 7 of the Public Property Protection Act should be interpreted in such a manner as to make for the smooth working of the executive machinery provided therein. 

He says that a high Government official such as the Chairman of the Public Property Protection Committee or a Deputy Commissioner, who normally would be the persons authorized by the President of the Union to arrést a person without a warrant, cannot be expected to effect an arrest in person, and that the Legislature obviously intended that such high Government officials must have the power to delegate the exercise of actual arrest. 

Any other interpretation of the Act, he contends, would make the Act unworkable or at least would result in administrative inconvenience. 

To the argument based on administrative convenience we cannot do better than adopt the words of a learned Law Lord in England and say with him: 

"The liberty of the subject and the convenience of the police or any other executive authority are not to be weighed in the scales against each other." ]

[ Arguments drawn from absurd consequences are no doubt forceful but in this case we can see no justification for implementing by forced judicial construction the power of delegation.

In Barnard v. Gorman (1) (1941) AC, 378 at pp. 383-4. Viscount Simon, the Lord Chancellor, said :

" The question is a very serious one, for, on the one hand, it is rightly stressed that the liberty of the subject is involved, and if an innocent man is detained under official authority his personal freedom is for the time being interfered with, even though he may be treated with all consideration and may, in fact, have suffered little from being in temporary custody. 

On the other hand, if officers of customs cannot detain a man who is coming off a ship and whom they suspect on reasonable grounds of endeavouring to defraud the customs, but must either let him go and rely on a subsequent summons being effectually served on him, or, if not, must arrest him at their own risk, the working of our customs law is likely to be seriously impeded, and the question would arise whether it did not require to be amended.

Our duty in the matter is plain. 

We must not give the statutory words a wider meaning merely because on a narrower construction the words might leave a loophole for frauds against the revenue. 

If, on the proper construction of the section, that is the result, it is not for judges to attempt to cure it. 

That is the business of Parliament. 

Our duty is to take the words as they stand and to give them their true construction, having regard to the language of the whole section, and, as far as relevart, of the whole Act, always preferring the natural meaning of the word involred, but none the less always giving the word its appropriate construction according to the context." ]

ဥပဒေကိုအထက်ပါအတိုင်းပိုင်ပိုင်နိုင်နိုင်ဆုံးဖြတ်ခြင်းမျိုးမတွေ့ရသလောက်

ဖြစ်သည်။

မှတ်သားသင့်သောဥပဒေပညာနှင့်အရေးအသားဖြစ်သည်။

အမှုတွင်၊တရားလွှတ်တော်ချုပ်တရားဝန်ကြီးဦးဧမောင်က၊တရားသူကြီးများ၏တာဝန်မှာဥပဒေပါစကားရပ်များကိုအရှိအတိုင်းကောက်ယူ၍၊အများသိရှိသောအဓိပ္ပာယ်၊ဆီလျော်သောပြန်ဆိုမှုတို့ကိုသာပြုရသည်၊ဟာကွက်များကိုကုစားပေးရန်မဟုတ်ကြောင်း၊အောက်ပါအတိုင်းမြွက်ဆိုဖော်ပြခြင်းသည်ပညာရှင်ပီသကြောင်းထင်ဟပ်သည်-

[ The duty of Judges is only to take the words as they stand, give its natural meaning and appropriate construction, but not cure loopholes in a statute. ]

စီရင်ထုံးစာမျက်နှာ၂၁၁၊၂၁၂၊၂၁၃တွင်အောက်ပါအတိုင်းနိဂုံးချုပ်သည်-

[ To sum up, our conclusions are that authority under section 7 (2) of the Public Property Protection Act, 1947, cannot be invested in the Public Property Protection Committee, that U Chan Tha had no authority to act either individually or on behalf of the Committee, that the police officer who actually effected the arrest was not authorized in law to arrest the applicant, that his detention under the preliminary warrant under the hand of U Chan Tha was unlawful, and that there not having been a report to the President by the officer effecting the arrest (in fact, there is in this case no officer who could have legally made such a report the final order of detention of the 1st March 1948 is invalid.

This, in our opinion, is a stronger case for interference than that which went before the Privy Council in King-Emperor v. Deshpande (1). 73 I.A. 144.

In view of the findings arrived at by us on matters of substance, what follows is a matter of minor detail.

Still, as the liberty of a citizen is in issue, we consider it right to draw attention to matters even of detail.

The warrant directing the detention of the applicant for a period of six months reads as follows :

"Being satisfied that G. N. Banerjee Ex. Supply Officer Mergui son of late Mr. Bannerjee has committed a prejudicial act, I, U Thet Tin, Ministry of Commerce, Supply and Transport, by order of the President of the Union hereby direct that G. N. Bannerjee be detained in Insein Jail for a period of six months with effect from the 18-2-48."

From this order it would appear as if it was U Thet Tin who was satisfied that G. N. Banerji had committed a prejudicial act. 

That is not what the law requires.

The law contemplates that the President should be satisfied. 

It is to be hoped that in drafting documents of grave importance involving interference with fundamental rights of the citizen greater precision in the use of language would be exercised.

In the result we direct that G. N. Banerji, who is now in detention in Insein Jail under an order of the 1st March 1948 of the Government of the Union of Burma, Ministry of Commerce, Supply and Transport, being Order No. 49/PPP48, be forthwith released and that this order of the Court be forthwith communicated to the Superintendent of the Jail, Insein Jail Annexe Insein.]