Case Law Details
Pradeep Kumar Sonthalia Vs Dhiraj Prasad Sahu & Dhiraj Sahu Anr. (Supreme Court)
In the present case, it would be significant to add that it is not necessary to make a declaration incompatible in the use of the word ‘date’ with the general rule of law since the word ‘date’ is quite capable of meaning the point of time when the event took place rather than the whole day.
The well-known presumption that a man is innocent until he is found guilty, cannot be subverted because the words can accommodate both competing circumstances. While it is known that an acquittal operates on nativity, no case has been cited before us for the proposition that a conviction takes effect even a minute prior to itself. Moreover, the word “date” can be used to denote occasion, time, year etc. It is also used for denoting the time up to the present when it is used in the phrase “the two dates”. Significantly, the word “date” can also be used to denote a point of time etc. (See Roget’s International Thesaurus third edition Note 114.4).
To say that this presumption of innocence would evaporate from 00.01 A.M., though the conviction was handed over at 14.30 P.M. would strike at the very root of the most fundamental principle of Criminal Jurisprudence.
Inasmuch as a conviction for an offence is under a penal law, it cannot be deemed to have effect from a point of time anterior to the conviction itself. As rightly pointed by Dr. A.M. Singhvi, this court held in Union of India vs. M/S G.S Chatha Rice Mills9 that legal fiction cannot prevail over facts where law does not intend it to so prevail. It was a case where a notification was issued by the Government of India under section 8A of the Customs Tariff Act 1975, introducing a tariff on all goods originating in or exported from Pakistan. The notification was uploaded on the e-gazette at 20:46:58 hours on 16.02.2019. The Government of India took a stand that the enhanced rate of duty was applicable even to those who had already presented bills of entry for home consumption before the enhanced rate was notified in the e-gazette. The importers successfully challenged the claim of the customs authorities before the High court and the Union of India came up on appeal to this Court. An extensive analysis was made in Section H of the decision in M/S G.S. Chatha Rice Mills, on the interpretation of the words “day” and “date”. After taking note of several decisions, some of which arose under the law of Limitation, some under the law of Insurance and some under the Election law, this Court pointed out that these expressions were construed in varying contexts and that a general position in law, divorced from subject, context and statute, has not been laid down. As succinctly put by this Court, “Legislative silences create spaces for creativity” and that “between interstices of legislative spaces and silences, the law is shaped by the robust application of common sense”.
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