Case: T. A. Krishnaswamy Vs. State Of Madras

1. The appellant was convicted by a learned Magistrate under S. 18 (a)(ii) read with S. 27 of the Drugs Act, 1940 for having manufactured for sale and also exhibited for sale a drug known as OKSAL which did not contain the ingredients in the proportion mentioned in the label pasted on the contained of the drug. The Magistrate sentenced him to pay a fine of Rs. 125 and in default of payment of the fine, to rigorous imprisonment for one month. On appeal by the appellant to the Sessions Judge, that conviction was set aside and the appellant was acquitted. On appeal by the State to the High Court of Madras, the judgment of the learned Sessions Judge was set aside and the conviction and sentence passed by the learned Magistrate were restored. Hence the present appeal by special leave.

Court's reasoning:
5. Now, the report of the Analyst did not state the protocols of any test. It is said that R. 46 and Form 13 indicated that the protocols of the tests applied had to be stated in the report. The contention is that in the absence of the protocols the report was not in the prescribed form and was hence not admissible in evidence. It appears that protocols of test means the details of the process of test.6.The question then is : Do R. 46 and Form 13 require that in the present case the protocols of tests had to be stated?We do not think they do. Obviously, the rule and the form contemplate analysis and test is two different things, for otherwise both words would not have been mentioned nor the word or been put between them. It is true that the rule and the form require that the protocols of a test should be stated. They do not require any protocols to be stated in the report of an analysis. Now in the present case what the report did was only to give the result of the analysis. It did not give the result of any test. Nor does it say that any test had been carried out. Indeed no dispute exists as to the components constituting the drug, the only dispute being as to the quantities in which they were so contained. The report only stated the quantities of them found on analysis. That being so, in our view, the report is in the prescribed form and is fully admissible in evidence.7. The Inspector in his letter to the Analyst no doubt stated that the sample was sent to him for "test or analysis But what the Analyst did was only to make an analysis. It is irrelevant to consider whether he should also have carried out a test Even if he should have and did not, that would not prevent the report of the result of the analysis from being admitted in evidence. That report would none the less be conclusive evidence under S. 25(3) of the Act.8. Our attention was drawn to the case of Raj Kishan v. The State, AIR 1960 All 460 . There it was observed that when a report did not state the protocols of the test applied, it could not be said to be a report in the prescribed form. It is not clear from the judgment whether the report in that case purported to be the report of a test or of an analysis. If that case intended to hold that no report of an analysis is in the prescribed form where the protocols are not stated, we are unable to agree with it.