070-NLR-NLR-V-61-AGONIS-PERERAAppellant-and-W.-D.-A.-GANEGAMA-S.-I.-Police-Respondent.pdf
T. S. FERNANDO, J.—Agonis Per era v. Qanegama
281
1959Present: T. S. Fernando, J.
AGONIS PERERA, Appellant, and W. D. A. GANEGAMA(S. I. Police), Respondent
S. G. 393—M. C. Colombo, 9294[C
Excise Ordinance—Charge of possessing unlawfully manufactured liquor—Certificatesof Assistant Government Analyst and Deputy Government Analyst—Evidentialvalue thereof—Excise {Amendment) Act, No. 36 of 1957, s. 3.
The expression “Government Analyst” in section 3 of the Excise(Amendment) Act, No. 36 of 1957, does not include the deputy or any of theassistants of the Government Analyst. Their certificates, therefore, whenproduced in a prosecution for possession of unlawfully manufactured liquor,do not have the presumptive evidential value which is given to the certificateof the Government Analyst.
j^kPPEAT, from a judgment of the Magistrate’s Court, Colombo.
N. P. M. DaluwaMe, for the accused-appellant.
P. Nagendran, Crown Counsel, for the Attorney-General.
November 24, 1959. T. S. Ebkna^tdo, J.—
The Excise (Amendment) Act, No. 36 of 1957—section 3—providesthat the production of a certificate of the Government Analyst that heis satisfied that any liquor analysed by him is not liquor of a descriptionthat could have been manufactured under the authority of a licenceissued under the Excise Ordinance and is not liquor that could havebeen manufactured in a Government distillery raises a rebuttablepresumption that the liquor so analysed is unlawfully manufactured.
282
K.cmagaratnam v. Suppiah
In order to prove that the liquor possession of which was broughthome to the appellant was unlawfully manufactured the prosecutorrelied upon the statutory presumption referred to above, butunfortunately for him he produced not a certificate of the GovernmentAnalyst but a report of two persons, viz., an Assistant GovernmentAnalyst and the Deputy Government Analyst. Sven assuming that thereport is equivalent to a certificate, it must be noted that the expression“ Government Analyst ” is not defined either in the act or in the ExciseOrdinance as including the deputy or any of the assistants of theGovernment Analyst. The expression must receive its ordinary meaning.If the legislature intended the certificate of an officer other than theGovernment Analyst himself to be sufficient to raise the presumption,such an intention should, in my opinion, have found specific expressionin the statute itself. I can discover nothing even in the InterpretationOrdinance that can avail the prosecutor in the circumstances of thiscase.
The conviction and sentence are set aside and the appellant isacquitted.
Appeal allowed.