Lord Devlin (delivering the judgment of the Board):

This is an appeal in an action for false imprisonment. The three defendants in the action, who are the appellants before the Board, are two police officers and the Government of Malaysia. Nothing turns on the separate responsibility of any of the defendants and the action can be described as one brought against the police. The two plaintiffs in the action were arrested on 11 July 1965 for an offence, said to have been committed on the previous day against either s. 304A of the Penal Code or s. 34A of the Road Traffic Ordinance, 1958. The former of these sections corresponds to the offence of manslaughter and the latter makes it an offence to cause death by dangerous or reckless driving. The plaintiffs were held in custody overnight and brought before the Magistrate on 12 July when he made an order for their detention for seven days under s. 117 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cap. 6) for further investigation. On the next day the plaintiffs were released, the police having found that there was not sufficient evidence to proceed against either of them. It was agreed that the false imprisonment, if any, was brought to an end by the Magistrate's order. The plaintiffs' action was dismissed in the High Court of Malaya but was successful on appeal in the Federal Court of Malaysia, where judgment was given in their favour for damages of $2,500 each. From this judgment the defendants have appealed to the Board. The plaintiffs have not entered an appearance as respondents to this appeal so that their Lordships have not had the advantage of hearing argument on both sides.

The police inquiry began with a complaint made at the Mentakab police station at 10.15 p.m. on 10 July. The complainant stated that at 9.15 p.m. when he was driving home with four friends in his car, he passed a lorry, coming in the opposite direction, with a trailer loaded with timber. As he passed a piece of timber fell off the lorry, hitting his windscreen and two of the men in the car. One of the men died. The lorry did not stop. Police inquiries led them to conclude that the incident had occurred as stated and that the lorry involved in it was numbered PC 8200. It is unnecessary to give details of the enquiry up to this point since it is not disputed that the police had reasonable grounds for reaching this conclusion. Directions were given that the lorry PC 8200 was to be stopped and detained.

At 7.55 a.m. on 11 July PC 22927 of Bukit Tinggi police station found the lorry stationary in front of a coffee shop about a quarter of a mile from the police station. He found and detained the two plaintiffs, one of whom admitted to being the driver of the lorry and the other the attendant. The corporal in charge of the station arrived ten minutes later. According to his evidence (the police evidence generally was accepted by the trial Judge) one of the plaintiffs "asked me what wrong he had done. I told him that I had received instruction from Mentakab to detain him on suspicion of a fatal road accident case". This was said in the hearing of the other plaintiff. About 1 p.m. the area inspector from Mentakab and his superior officer, the district superintendent, - these are the two individual defendants in the action, - arrived at the coffee shop. They interrogated both plaintiffs there. The one who said he was the driver said that they had not met with any accident. The evidence is not very clear, but it is reasonable to infer that he meant by that that they were not at the scene of the accident at the relevant time, for both men were asked to give an account of their movements. The police officers did not regard their explanations as satisfactory and it was decided that they should be taken to Mentakab police station for further investigation. Since an attendant in a lorry is frequently an alternate driver and the police felt a doubt about which man was the driver at the relevant time, both men were treated al