The excise debate

Lahore, Sunday, November 16, 1924

THE debate that took place on the Punjab Excise Amendment Bill at Thursday’s meeting of the Legislative Council was not an excise debate at all, but a debate on one of those proposals to amend the criminal law of the land in the direction of further increasing the already excessive powers of the administration and further diminishing the attenuated liberties of the subject, which the bureaucracy in this country seems to regard as a panacea for all evils, real and imaginary. The clause of the Bill around which the discussion centred runs as follows: “When any of the articles mentioned in clause (c) of subsection 1 of section 61 or any unlawfully manufactured liquor is found in any building or structure which is in the joint possession of several persons, it shall be presumed, unless the contrary is proved, that all such persons who had at the time the article was found attained the age of 18 years were in joint possession of such articles or such unlawfully manufactured liquor.” The proposal is not only repugnant to all our notions of criminal justice, because it shifts the onus of proof form the prosecution to the defence, but is so sweeping as to take one’s breath away. Not only the existence in any building of the implements with which illicit liquor is manufactured, but the very existence of such liquor is to penalise all those who are in joint possession of the building, subject only to their having attained the age of 18. The unlawfully manufactured liquor may have been brought into the building by only one of the persons in possession of it without the knowledge or consent of anyone else, and may have been brought by someone who is not in possession of the building at all — as some of the speakers pointed out, just to satisfy his greed or his public or private animosity.