The judgment established the importance of fundamental duties, national ideals, and the principle of 'de minimis non curat lex' in interpreting and applying criminal provisions.

The petitioner are said to be "Sarvodaya" workers. According to them. Their leader is Sri M. P. Manmadan, renowned Gandhian. The petitioner are now accused in a case registered as Crime No. 235/86 of the Museum Police Station, Trivandrum. The said crime has been registered on the allegation that the petitioner prevented one Prasad from entering a liquor shop at Nandavanam in Trivandrum. The first information statement was furnished by the said Prasad and the police registered the crime for the Prasad and the police registered the crime for the offences under Ss. 143 and 341 of the Penal Code (for short the Code) read with S. 149 of the code. The incident happened on 8-9-1986 as part of a campaign against the evils of consumption of alcohol. This petition under S. 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is to quash the said crime and the subsequent proceedings.

2. According to the petitioners, no physical obstruction had been caused by them to any one entering the liquor shop and instead, what they did was only to persuade those people who are inclined to alcoholism and also those who engage themselves in the distribution of alcohol, to desist from such activities, as the petitioners considered the alcoholism is a perilous social evil. They also contended that they have only done their duty enjoined on them. According to them it is one of their fundamental duties to cherish and follow the noble ideals of the eschewing alcohol, which ideal had once inspired the national struggle for freedom. The idea of the physical prevention of any person from entering into the building had never occurred to the any one of them contended the learned counsel for the petitioner. It was also contended alternatively that what they did would never amount to an offence under the S. 341 of the Code.

3. The offence of wrongful restraint is defined in S. 339 of the Code. It involves voluntary obstruction caused to any person so as to prevent him from proceedings in any direction in which that the person has a right to proceed "voluntarily" is a word of special connotation in the Code as defined in S. 39 of the Code. As per the definition "a person is said to cause an effect voluntarily when he causes it by means whereby he intended to cause it, or by means which, at the time of the employing those means, he knew or had reason to believe to be likely to cause it." It cannot be contended that the intention of the Sarvodaya workers, when they staged their action programmes in form of the liquor shop, was anything other than dissuading people from drinking liquor and to wake up the moral conscience of the public towards the evils of alcoholism. It is a matter of history that propagation of anti-alcoholism was one of the cherished programmes of Mahatma Gandhi. The profound influence which the said ideal exerted on the India leadership has amply reflected in the inclusion of the prohibition as one of the Directive Principles of State Policy in Part IV of the Constitution of India. There can be no two opinions on the fact that the campaign against alcoholism was one of noble ideals which inspired the Indian thought during the freedom struggle.

4. Part IV-A of our Constitution embodies a fasciculus of fundamental duties of every citizens of India. One of such duties is "to cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom". The acts alleged against the petitioner have to be viewed in the above perspective. When those acts are so viewed, it leaves one in little doubt that the petitioner were inspired and guided by the noble ideals of our national struggle for freedom. When this case is understood in that way, I find considerable force in the contention of the petitioners that the allegations made against them were only in respect of their activities in the discharge of their fundamental duties. Even if they had gone a little beyond the permissible limits. I am not inclined to attributed any criminal animus in it.

5.