Good J delivering oral JUDGMENT:

This case was submitted for revision at the instance of the learned Magistrate who tried it. The accused was charged before him in the Magistrate's Court at Kuala Kangsar with an offence under reg. 10(1) punishable under reg. 20A of the Emergency (Registration Areas) Regulations, 1948. The charge was.

That you on 17 June 1958 at about 3.30 p.m. at Police Food Check at 32 'bd milestone Kenas Road, Kuala Kangsar, in the district of Kuala Kangsar, in the State of Perak, did fail to produce your NRIC when asked by a Police Officer in uniform in execution of his duty, and you have thereby committed an offence under reg. 10 (1) and punishable under reg. 20A of the Emergency (Registration Areas) Regulations, 1948.

The facts given in evidence by the prosecution were that the accused was driving a lorry, and when he arrived at a Police road block or food check he did not stop but one of the constables on duty at the road block called out after him and he then stopped. The constable went up to him and asked him to produce his identity card which he did not produce. The Regulation under which he was charged provides as follows:

Any police officer and any person authorised for the purpose by the Chief Police Officer may at any time require any person required to be registered under these Regulation to produce his identity card for inspection, and, if such person refuses or fails to produce such card on demand or within such time as such police officer orauthorised person may allow, he shall be guilty of an offence against these Regulations.

At the trial, Mr. Yeo, Counsel for the accused, submitted that the onus lay upon the prosecution to establish affirmatively that the accused was a person required to be registered under the Regulations and submitted that as no such proof had been given by the prosecution, there was no case for the accused to answer. The learned Magistrate accepted that submission and acquitted the accused without calling upon him for his defence; but subsequently he came to the conclusion that he had been wrong in taking the course that he did and, having come to that conclusion, he very properly of his own motion sent the case to the High Court for revision. There is only one point in these proceedings, and that is the point which was the subject-matter of Mr. Yeo's submission at the trial. The question is: Where does the onus of proof lie in order to establish that a person is, or is not, as the case may be, a person required to be registered under these Regulations? In order to discover what persons are required to be registered under these Regulations, it is necessary first to look at regs. 3 and 4. Since all the orders and declarations under regs. 3 and 4 were made and promulgated in the years 1948 and 1949, it will be more convenient if I read those Regulations in the form in which they stood at that time (as a result of constitutional changes that have taken place the wording has been altered though the substance remains the same). In their original form before amendments at the date of Merdeka in 1957 they read as follows:

3. The Mentri Besar in any State and the Resident Commissioner in any Settlement may, by order, declare any area or areas within the State or Settlement to be a registration area for the purposes of these Regulations.

4. Where an area has been declared a registration area, the Mentri Besar or Resident Commissioner, as the case may be, may, by the same or by a subsequent order, direct that all persons or any specified class of persons within that area or within any specified part thereof shall register with the police or such other authority as may be specified.

Fortunately, the editor of the Emergency Regulations has set out a list of all the relevant gazette notifications, and I have therefore been able to refer to every notification under reg. 3 declaring registration areas, and to every notification under reg. 4 directing what persons or c