9911796707
TMI Blog1997 (9) TMI 4X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... d Co., a registered partnership firm (respondent No. 1), and its three partners (respondents Nos. 2 to 4). The Special Court took cognizance of the offence alleged and issued process against the respondents for their attendance. After entering appearance they filed an application praying for their discharge under section 245(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Special Court allowed the application on the ground that before granting sanction for their prosecution under section 279(1) of the Act, the sanctioning authority did not give the respondents a personal hearing. The other grounds raised by the respondents for their discharge were, however, kept open. Assailing the order of discharge, the appellant filed a revision petition in th ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... n years and with fine. Section 278B reads as under : " 278B. (1) Where an offence under this Act has been committed by a company, every person who, at the time the offence was committed, was in charge of, and was responsible to, the company for the conduct of the business of the company as well as the company shall be deemed to be guilty of the offence and shall be liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly : Provided that nothing contained in this sub-section shall render any such person liable to any punishment if he proves that the offence was committed without his knowledge or that he had exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of such offence. (2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (1), wher ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... appearing in the section also make it unmistakably clear that the company alone can be prosecuted and punished even if the persons mentioned in the categories (ii) and (iii), who are for all intents and purposes vicariously liable for the offence, are not arraigned, for it is the company which is primarily guilty of the offence. Even though in view of the above provisions of section 278B, a company can be prosecuted and punished for an offence committed under section 276B (besides other offences under the Act) the sentence of imprisonment which has got to be imposed thereunder cannot be imposed, it being a juristic person. This apparent anomalous situation can be resolved, needless to say, only by a proper interpretation of the section. Be ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... be guilty of a criminal intent, traditional punishments prove ineffective, and new and different punishments have to be devised. The real penalty of a corporation is the diminution of respectability, that is, the stigma. It is now usual to insert provisions to the effect that the director or manager who has acted for the corporation should be punished. But it is appropriate that the corporation itself, should be punished. In the public mind, the offence should be linked with the name of the corporation, and not merely with the name of the director or manager, who may be a non-entity. Punishment of fine in substitution of imprisonment in the case of a corporation could solve the problem in one aspect; but, at the same time, it is necessary ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... rved : " The paramount object in statutory interpretation is to discover what the Legislature intended. This intention is primarily to be ascertained from the text of the enactment in question. That does not mean the text is to be construed merely as a piece of prose, without reference to its nature or purpose. A statute is neither a literary text nor a divine revelation. 'Words are certainly not crystals, transparent and unchanged' as Mr. Justice Holmes has wisely and properly warned (Towne v. Eisher, [1918] 245 US, 418, 425). Learned Hand, J. was equally emphatic when he said : 'Statutes should be construed, not as theorems of Euclid, but with some imagination of the purposes which lie behind them'. (Lenigh Valley Coal Co. v. Yensavage : ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... (as held in the impugned judgment); or (ii) that a company may be prosecuted and convicted but not punished, but these interpretations will be de hors section 278B or wholly inconsistent with its plain language. For the foregoing discussion, we are unable to sustain the impugned order of the High Court so far as it held that the prosecution of respondent No. 1 was legally impermissible. Equally unsustainable is the order of the High Court dismissing the revision petition qua the other respondents in the absence of any finding to indicate that it agreed with the reasoning of the trial court for their discharge. We, therefore, allow this appeal, set aside the impugned order of the High Court upholding the discharge of the respondents and dir ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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