CORRESPONDENCE
| Date | 01 July 1967 |
| Published date | 01 July 1967 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1967.tb01155.x |
JULY
1967
REVll3WS
4ar
Fitness for purpose (section
14
(1)
of Sale of Goods Act
1893)
is illustrated
on
p.
167
with the example of
a
student who asks
a
law bookseller for
a
book
on the law of sale of goods.
A
breach of section
14
(1)
will
arise,
we
are informed, if
inter
a!in
“the bookseller supplies an unsuitable book such
as,
for example, an out-of-date edition.”
It
is not booksellers alone who
can sin in this respect.
CHARLES
D. DRAKE.
CORRESPONDENCE
THE
EDITOR,
Dear Sir,
Mr. C. M. Shafqat commented in
a
letter in your November issue on my
article on the Criminal Procedure Code of Northern Nigeria in
your
May
issue.
I
wish to comment myself on two of the points raised in his letter.
1.
He joins issue with my view that the drafting of a charge
at
the earliest
possible stage is fairer to the accused,
a
proposition for which
I
cited the
support of the Supreme Court. Mr. Shafqat’s criticism has led me to
a
further consideration of this subject and
I
have now concluded that not
only
is
it
fairer to the accused, but that such early drafting of the charge is
mandatory both in Northern Nigeria and in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent
since
1898.
The section which deals with the drafting
of
charges (section
160
(1)
of the Northern Nigerian Code and section
264
of the Indian
Code)
states
that the magistrate
shall
draft
a
charge
“
if, when such evidence and examina-
tion have been taken and made,
or
at any previous stage of the case, the
magistrate is of opinion that there is ground for presuming that the accused
has committed an offence.” Until
1898
the words “or
at
any previous stage
of the case
’’
did not appear in section
264
of the Indian Code and the magis-
trate was required to hear all prosecution witnesses before drafting a charge.
But once those words were included, the magistrate became bound to draft
a
charge at an earlier stage once it appeared to him that there was ground
for presuming that the accused had committed an offence. Thus if the
Arst
witness for the prosecution provided grounds for such presumption, the
magistrate was bound to draft a charge
at
that stage however many other
witnesses remained to be called. The history of this amendment and the
procedure both before and after it are considered by Munir
J.
in the case of
Hemn
Ram
v.
The
Emperor
A.I.R.
(32)
1945
Lahore
201.
Whatever, there-
fore, may be the advantages to the advocate of two opportunities for cross-
examination, as set out by Mr. Shafqat, the law positively requires that such
advantages shall not be enjoyed in respect of any witnesses called after the
prosecution has satisfied the magistrate that there is
a
ground for presuming
that an offence has been committed. To draft
a
charge at that stage, there-
fore, is not only fairer to the accused (as
I
believe
it
is) but
a
positive
requirement of the law and has been since
1898.
As
Sohoni
says in the
15th edition of his
Commentary
at
page
105
:
“The procedure of taking the
whole case
for
the prosecution and then drawing up the charge is old-fashioned
and exploded.”
The
Modern Law
Revkw
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