Om Prakash Vs Union of India (Supreme Court of India), Dated: September 30, 2011)- Central Excise Act – Sub-section (2) of Section 9A makes provision for compounding of all offences under Chapter II. Significantly, Chapter II of the 1944 Act deals with levy and collection of duty and offences under the said Act have been specified in Section 9, which provides that whoever commits any of the offences set out in Section 9, would be punishable in the manner indicated under Subsection (1) itself. What is even more significant is that Section 20 of the 1944 Act, which has been extracted herein above, provides that the Officer in-Charge of a police station to whom any person is forwarded under Section 19, shall
(emphasis supplied)
either admit him to bail to appear before the Magistrate having jurisdiction, or on his failure to provide bail, forward him in custody to such Magistrate. The said provision clearly indicates that offences under the Central Excise Act, as set out in Section 9 of the Act, are bailable, since the Officer in-Charge of a police station has been mandated to grant bail to the person arrested and brought before him in terms of Section 19 of the Act. In view of the provisions of Sections 9 and 9A read with Section 20 of the 1944 Act, offences under the Central Excise Act, 1944, besides being non-cognisable, are also bailable, though not on the logic that all non-cognisable offences are bailable, but in view of the aforesaid provisions of the 1944 Act, which indicate that offences under the said Act are bailable in nature.
