QUEEN   v.  PODI BABA.

D. C. (Criminal), Kalutara, 618.

Defective warrant of arrest-Competency of a police headman as public servant to arrest a person charged with robbery, independently of a warrant- Causing hurt to such servant-Plea of private defence.

Causing hurt to a police headman, while in good faith and under colour of his office he was executing a defective warrant of arrest upon a person charged with robbery, is an offence under section 323 of the Penal Code.

And in the absence of any act on the headman's part to cause reason­able apprehension of death or grievous hurt, the right of private defence cannot be availed of against an arrest made by such public servant, who believed bonafide that he had the power to make the arrest.

THE accused having been charged with robbery, a warrant of arrest was issued against him, addressed to one Jayasuria, Deputy Fiscal and Mudaliyar of Rayigam korale, who entrusted it for execution to the complainant, Jayatilaka, Police Headman of Rambukkana. Upon arresting the accused, the accused caused him hurt by cutting him with a knife.

The District Judge convicted the accused under section 323 of the Penal Code.

On appeal, Jayawardana appeared for defendant, and contended that the complainant had no authority to arrest the defendant, and that the warrant was informal because it did not disclose the district over which the signing Magistrate had jurisdiction, nor set forth sufficiently clearly the offence with which the defendant was charged.

Cur. adv. vult.

19th March, 1895. Withers, J.

The question is whether the accused has been rightly convicted of an offence under section 323 of the Ceylon Penal Code, in that on a certain day in January last he voluntarily caused hurt to the prosecutor, being a public servant, in the dis­charge of his duty as such public servant. It was strenuously pressed upon me by Mr. Jayawardana that the warrant committed to the prosecutor was bad, and that the prosecutor had no power to execute it.

The prosecutor, one David Perera Jayatilaka, is a Police Head­man of Rambukkana. The duty he was supposed to be discharg­ing at the time the accused assaulted him was the execution of a warrant of arrest signed by the Police Magistrate of Panadure.

The warrant was produced before the Court, and is marked with the letter A. The warrant, it was urged, does not particularize with sufficient certainty the offence with which the person to be arrested under it stands charged, and it does n