A.S. Sulochana v. C. Dharmalingam (1987)

It is the case where two separate rules meet on one set of facts, and that is exactly why it is set. The presumption against intending injustice says a court prefers the reading that avoids an unjust result. The rule of strict construction says a provision visiting the violator with the punishment of eviction must be read narrowly. Here they point the same way, and the answer is stronger for saying so.

The proposition it establishes is also memorable in one line: a tenant who inherits a tenancy does not inherit his father's contravention.

A tenancy had passed to a son. The father had sub-let — the contravention on which eviction was sought — eighteen years earlier. The landlord sought to evict the son on the strength of what the father had done.

The son could not be evicted. Evicting a son for a sub-letting done by his father eighteen years earlier would punish an innocent person. The Court said:

"The law in its wisdom seeks to punish the guilty who commits the sin, and not his son who is innocent of the rent law offence."

A tenant who inherits a tenancy does not inherit his father's contravention, and a provision visiting the violator with the punishment of eviction must be strictly construed.

Two rules, applied in sequence.

First, the character of the provision. Eviction is a punishment, and a provision that inflicts it on a violator is construed strictly. Strict construction here means that the person penalised must be the person the provision describes — the violator — and the statute is not extended by its policy to somebody else. The same idea runs through Seksaria Cotton Mills v. State of Bombay (1954): ambiguous words in a penal statute must not become traps for honest, unlearned and unwary men, honest and substantial compliance suffices, and the statute's scope is not extended to others by its policy. Chinubhai v. State of Bombay AIR 1960 makes the point on a different provision: strictly construed, a prohibition on permitting entry into a confined space imposed no absolute duty, and the prosecution had to prove that the employer permitted the workers to enter. And CBI v. Sanjay Dutt states the tie-breaker: where a penal statute bears two possible constructions, the court leans to the one that exempts the subject from penalty.

Second, the presumption against injustice. The legislature is presumed not to intend injustice. Visiting a son with the consequences of an act done by his father, long before, is the paradigm of an unjust result, and where the words leave room the court prefers the reading that avoids it. The constitutional reinforcement is in Union of India v. Filip Tiago De Gama (1990) 1 SCC 277: a construction producing arbitrary discrimination is avoided because it would be vulnerable under Article 14.

What strict construction does not mean, and the answer should say it, because the examiner is testing for the qualification:

• It does not displace the ordinary rules of language. M.V. Joshi v. M.U. Shimpi AIR 1961 SC 1494 held that butter made from curd is butter within the definition, because strict construction of a penal statute does not displace the principle that the primary test is the language employed.
• It does not exclude common sense. Swantraj v. State of Maharashtra holds that where the language permits, a penal statute may be read to suppress the mischief and advance the remedy, the substance of the provision being decisive; Municipal Corporation of Delhi v. Laxmi Tandon reads sale under the food adulteration law as covering all commercial transactions in which adulterated food is supplied for consumption.
• The benefit of doubt is a residual rule, not a first move. As Bowers v. Gloucester Corporation (1963) 1 Q.B. 883 puts it, a provision merely difficult to interpret is not ambiguous, and the citizen gets the benefit only where, having applied all the proper canons of interpretation, the matter is still left in doubt.

The limit of the presumption. It cannot override clear words. Where the language is clear and unambiguous the literal rule is applied even if it leads to an injustice — B.N. Mutto v. T.K. Nandi (1979) and G. Narayanaswami v. G. Pannerselvam (1972) are the course's examples.

It opens the presumption against intending injustice, and it is the natural second case after Filip Tiago because it shows the presumption working without any constitutional argument. In the module on construction by subject matter it serves the strict-construction head instead, on the same facts.

It disposes of an argument that a statutory penalty attaches to the tenancy rather than to the person, and more generally the argument that a successor takes the predecessor's defaults along with the right.

It does not decide that a successor never bears any consequence of a predecessor's act — the holding is about a provision that punishes a violator — and it does not soften strict construction into a general licence to read penal provisions narrowly whenever the result is harsh; the words must leave room.