Spenser Wilkinson J:

[1] The facts and arguments sufficiently appear from the Judgment.

[2] The appellant was charged in the Sessions Court at Kuala Lumpur as follows:

That you on or about 10.8.49 at Port Swettenham being a public servant to wit RODO No 418 did attempt to cheat the Customs Department by submitting a false voucher claiming an expense of $202.60 being $38.50 an excess of what was legitimately due to you regarding your transfer from Butterworth to Port Swettenham, an offence publishable under ss 511 and 420 Penal Code.

[3] The following statement of the facts is taken from the grounds of decision of the President of the Sessions Court:

The case concerns four receipts, P2a, P2b, P2c and P2d, which are allegedly from the Simla Hotel, Penang. These receipts claimed that the accused expended the sum of $38.50 in respect of board and lodging in the Simla Hotel, over the period of 30 and 31 July. The crux of the Prosecution case was that the accused and his family never went near the Simla Hotel. To prove this they relied on the evidence of PW3, the Hotel-keeper of the Simla Hotel, and PW4, one of his assistants. PW3 stated that he had never seen the accused before; that he was certain that the accused never stayed in his Hotel on the night of 30/31 July; that the receipts as produced by the accused were not in the form or the chop which are issued by his Hotel; that the signature on the receipts, KM Ismail Ghaus, meant nothing to him and thereby that none of his employees bear that name. He produced P3a, P3b and P3c, on each of which was a different chop. These three forms and these three chops are the forms and chops used by him when giving receipts.

[4] The appellant being called upon for his defence gave evidence on his own behalf and also called his wife. The gist of their evidence was that they did stay two nights in this hotel; that the appellant did receive the receipts from PW 4 although he did not see him writing them out and that he had paid the money represented by the receipts.

[5] The learned President accepted the evidence of the third and fourth prosecution witnesses and rejected the evidence of the appellant and his wife and accordingly convicted the appellant and sentenced him to two months rigorous imprisonment. Mr Rajasooria who argued the appeal on behalf of the appellant, attacked the evidence of the third prosecution witness on the ground that it was clear that he never spent the period between 7 pm and 5 am at his own hotel and did not really know who his lodgers were. He attacked the evidence of the fourth prosecution witness on the ground that he had denied in examination in chief ever having issued any receipts but admitted in cross examination that he had occasionally issued receipts. Mr Rajasooria also pointed out that the hotel register referred to by the prosecution witnesses was not produced and that the grounds of decision of the learned President were based on the view that it was only the fourth prosecution witness who could have given these receipts which were made out in English whereas the evidence showed that there was at least one other employee in this hotel who could read and write English.

[6] There was a discrepancy between the evidence of the third and fourth prosecution witnesses on this point. In his evidence the 3rd prosecution witness, the proprietor of the hotel, stated that he had 14 employees; that they were all young persons; and that except for KM Mohamed Ibrahim, the fourth prosecution witness, none of them could read or write English. The fourth prosecution witness, however, stated definitely that there was a clerk whose duty it was to enter the details in the hotel register in English. In his grounds of decision the learned President states:

I was satisfied that they (third and fourth prosecution witnesses) had not issued any receipts to the accused nor had anyone else in that hotel issued any receipts to the accused.

[7] I find it difficult to understand how the l