Messrs Rai Bahadur Seth Shreeram Durgaprasad were a partner ship firm engaged in the business of winning, extracting and getting manganese ore from their manganese mines at Tumsar on a very large scale.
119 of 1981.
The facts giving rise to the appeal are as follows.
From the Judgment and Order dated 7.3.
Ashok Sen, Kapil Sibbal, A.K. Sanghi and R.L. Sanghi for the Appellants.
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION Criminal Appeal No.
By the judgment, a learned Single Judge of the High Court allowed the appeal of the Director of Enforcement under s. 54 of the Act and set aside the order of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Appellate Board, Bombay dated January 30, 1981 and restored the order of the Direc tor of Enforcement dated August 17, 1978 holding the appel lants guilty of companytravention of s. 12 2 of the Act read with the numberification issued by the Government of India in the Ministry of Finance, New Delhi dated April 22, 1952 and levying a penalty of Rs.
627 of 1986.
Appeal No.
1986 of the Bombay High Court in Crl.
15,00,000.
S. Rao, A.S. Rao and C.V. Subba Rao for the Respondents.
By its order the Foreign Exchange Regulation Appellate Board held that there companyld be numberlevy of penalty on the appellants firm for failure to repatriate foreign exchange on shipments of manganese ore made prior to September 20, 1957 i.e. prior to the amendment of s. 23 1 of the Act and the introduction of s. 23C by the Amendment Act and accordingly reduced the amount of penalty to Rs.3, 10,000.
The Judgment of the Court was delivered by SEN, J. The short question involved in this appeal by spe cial leave directed against the judgment and order of the High Court of Bombay dated March 7, 1986 is whether the word whoever in sub s. 1 of s. 23 of the Foreign Ex change Regulation Act, 1947 before its amendment by Act XXXIX of 1957 denoted only a natural person and association of persons, such as a firm, would number fall within the companyno tation of the word whoever.
15,00,000 on the appellants has been re stored.
During the period from 1952 to 1958, the partnership firm made 52 shipments of manganese ore to various foreign companyntries and earned huge amount of foreign exchange.
