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THE BAN AND.
THE
INDICTMENT 13
The primary object of a Criminal Procedure Code is to
secure prevention of the crimes through provision of a
machinery for the adequate punishment of offenders. The
Code of Criminal Procedure (Act V of 1898) is no exception.
Therefore the basic factor in respect of the Sind Provincial
Government's action under Section 99A of the Code in the
present case is the
commission
of the offence by the writer of
the Satyartha Prakash, Swami Dayananda Saraswati. If he
has not committed the offence "within the meaning of the
statute", if the commission of the offence is not deliberate,
actual and clearly perceptible "within the letter, or is not so-
direct as expressly and intelligibly described in the very words
of the Section itself", as otherwise it will be serious interference-
with the lawful human rights and duties of Rishi Dayananda
as a socio-religious reformer, then the seizure and forfeiture of
the copies of the Sindhi translation of the
Satyartha Prakath
by the Sind Government is illegal and unlawful.
The statutory requirement that the Provincial Govern-
ment should issne the notification regarding the seizure and
forfeiture of the book, setting forth the grounds which led
it to its decision, is a specific instruction of duty, obligatory
on its part and not permissive or discretionary. It is a
safeguard provided by the statute itself against any misuse,
whether deliberate or otherwise, of the provision through
unbridled executive decisions. From quite a common sense
point-of-view, wherever the law-making authority invests
the executive Government with fresh power to punish extra-
judicially nn offender against the law, it seems, the former
expects the latter, for the purpose of arriving at the correct
decision and exercising the penal authority conferred by the
law, to put itself strictly in the position of the impartial court_