This document discusses several cases related to the strict construction of penal statutes and criminal law. It provides guidelines for determining whether an offense requires mens rea or creates strict liability. Specifically, it establishes that statutes creating criminal offenses must be interpreted as requiring proof of mens rea or criminal intent unless Parliament clearly intended to create a strict liability offense. The document also summarizes several cases where courts interpreted ambiguous language in penal statutes in favor of defendants.

1. Strict Construction of Penal Statutes:
• A statute enacting an offence or imposing a
penalty is strictly construed.
• This rule serves in the selection of one when
two or more constructions are reasonably
open.
• The rule exhibits a preference for the liberty of
the subject and in a case of ambiguity enables
the court to resolve the doubt in favour of the
subject and against the Legislature which has
failed to express itself clearly.

2. • The settled rule of construction of penal
sections is “if there is a reasonable
interpretation which will avoid the penalty in
any particular case we must adopt that
construction. If there are two reasonable
constructions we must give the more lenient
one.”- Lord Esher

3. Law: The Exchange Control Act, 1947, prohibited
any person resident in UK, other than an
authorised dealer, to ‘borrow’ foreign currency
outside UK from any person other than an
authorised dealer, and breach of the restriction
was made punishable as an offence.
Facts: At the request of A, a resident in UK, B
made payments of foreign currency in NY &
Paris to person not accountable to A.

4. Held
• The arrangement was not a transaction of
borrowing by A from B .
• The word borrow is not equivalent to raising
of money or grant of any financial
accommodation but would only apply to those
cases where the legal relationship of lender
and borrower was established.
Case: Re, HPC Productions Ltd. ((1962) 1 All ER
37)

5. Law: Under the Restriction of Offensive
Weapons Act 1959, section 1(1), it was illegal to
manufacture, sell, hire, or offer for sale or hire,
or lend to any other person, amongst other
things, any knife "which has a blade which
opens automatically by hand pressure applied to
a button, spring or other device in or attached
to the handle of the knife".
Facts: A shopkeeper was charged under the
section for displaying a knife with a price ticket.

6. Held: The lack of the words exposing for sale in
the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959
suggested that only a true offer would be
prohibited by the Act.
Case: Fisher V Bell (1960) 3 ALL ER 731

7. Law: Rule 40 of the Central Excise Rules makes it
an offence for a wholesale purchaser of un-
manufactured tobacco to receive or to have in
his custody or possession non-duty paid
tobacco, and
provides that every such whole-sale purchaser
who receives or has in his custody or possession
any such goods, in contravention of this rule,
shall, in respect of every such offence, be liable
to pay the leviable on such goods, and to a
penalty which may extend to Rs.2000/- and the
goods shall also be liable to confiscation.

8. Facts: A wholesale purchaser of tobacco had
received non-duty paid tobacco and had mixed
the same with duty paid tobacco and separation
of non-duty paid tobacco from the mixture was
not possible.
Question before the SC was whether whole or
any part of this mixture was liable to
confiscation under the rule.

9. • The court held the rule being a penal provision it
could not be extended to authorise confiscation
of duty paid tobacco, and therefore, the entire
tobacco mixture was not liable to confiscation.
• But it was also held that as no one should be
permitted to benefit by his own wrong and as the
rule should be construed to prevent its evasion, it
was open to authorities to confiscate such part of
the mixture which reasonably represented the
value of the entire non-duty paid tobacco.
Case: Hari Chand Sarda v. Mizo District Council
(AIR 1967 SC 829)

10. Law:S.5(b) of Dangerous Drug Act, 1965, which provides that if a
person is concerned in the management of any premises used
for the purpose of smoking cannibis or cannabis resin or of
dealing in cannabis resin (whether by sale or orther-wise), he
shall be guilty of an offence.
Facts: Appellant sub-let a house reserving for herself a room. She
used to visit the house occasionally to collect letters and rent,
and to see that everything was well.
On one occasion in her absence the police searched the house
and found receptacles containing cannabis and LSD hidden in the
garden and cigarette ends containing cannabis in the kitchen.

11. Held: This conviction was later quashed by
the House of Lords on the grounds that
knowledge of the use of the premises was
essential to the offence. Since she had no such
knowledge, she did not commit the offence.
Case: Sweet v Parsley [1969] 1 All ER 347

12. • It is significant in English criminal law as it sets out a new
set of guidelines for determining strict liability. Lord
Reid laid down the following guidelines for all cases
where the offence is criminal as opposed to quasi-
criminal:
1. Wherever a section is silent as to mens rea there is a
presumption that, in order to give effect to the will of
Parliament, words importing mens rea must be read into
the provision.
2. It is a universal principle that if a penal provision is
reasonably capable of two interpretations, that
interpretation which is most favourable to the accused
must be adopted.
3. The fact that other sections of the Act expressly
require mens rea is not in itself sufficient to justify a
decision that a section which is silent as to mens rea creates
an absolute offence. It is necessary to go outside the Act
and examine all relevant circumstances in order to establish
that this must have been the intention of Parliament.