WAZIR CHAND Vs. STATE OF HIMACHAL PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are two petitions under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, one filed on 21-8-1951 by Wazir Chand and R. S. Sharma against the State of Himachal Pradesh, the District Magistrate of Chamba and the Station House Officer Kotwali Chamba, and the other by the former alone on 20-9-1951 against the first two of the three respondents mentioned above, against the seizure at Chamba of certain medicinal herbs, alleged to be worth about Rs. 47,000/-, by the Jammu and Kashmir police with the help of the Chamba police. The reliefs prayed for, and the grounds on which those reliefs are based, will appear from the following.

(2.) There is a firm styled the Kashmir Woods with Prabhu, Dayal, Trilok Nath and Gauri Shankar as its partners and its head office at Jammu, which carries on timber business in the Jammu and Kashmir State. On 4-3-1951 the two partners Prabhu Dayal and Gauri Shankar lodged a report with the police at Jammu against the third partner Trilok Nath and two employees of the firm in respect of an offence punishable under Section 409 of the Penal Code, the allegation being that criminal breach of trust had been committed to the tune of Rs. 1,00,000/- by falsification of accounts. This was followed by another report dated 23-6-1951 against the same persons for the same offence, but in respect of certain specific items aggregating Rs. 1,925/- and adding the present petitioner Wazir Chand as an abettor.

(3.) Another firm, known as the Himachal Drug Nurseries, carries on the same business of extracting, collecting and exporting various kinds of medicinal herbs at Chamba in the State of Himachal Pradesh. The first lease for the doing of this business was obtained by this firm from the State of Himachal Pradesh in June, 1949, for one year from 1-9-1949 to 31-8-1950, and it was renewed on 10/6/1950 for another year from 1/9/1950 to 31/8/1951.