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6. The trial Court on analysis of the evidence held that the prosecution had successfully proved its case against the Appellant beyond reasonable doubt. In the impugned judgment, the trial Court came to the following conclusions:

(i) Since Section 7 of the PFA Act was an exception to the rule of mens rea, the ignorance of the Appellate about the nature, substance or quality of the food was no defence.
(ii) The reports of both PA as well as CFL proved that the sample tested positive for argemone oil. The evidence of Satya Prakash, PA (PW-5) proved that the presence of argemone oil was injurious to health. Dr.Vinod Kumar (PW-4) Medical Specialist from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (DDU) Hospital gave the details of the patients admitted to that hospital of whom some had died as a result of dropsy consequent upon the consumption of loose mustard oil which showed the presence of argemone oil.
(iii) The mere presence of argemone oil, irrespective of the percentage of the adulteration, was sufficient to attract the offence under Section 7 read with Section 16 (1A) of the PFA Act.
(iv) Scientific literature showed that the chance of inadvertent adulteration of mustard seeds by argemone seeds was very remote.
(v) Since DW-3 stated that the Thin Layer Chromatography („TLC‟) method of testing showed the presence of argemone oil to the extent of .005% and the presence of more than .01% showed fluorescence, the report of the CFL corresponded to the finding that the percentage of argemone oil in the sample was above .01%.

7. It is submitted by Mr. Saket Sikri, learned counsel for the Appellant, that in terms of the proviso of Section 2 (m) of the PFA Act, if the quality and purity of the article was shown to have fallen below the prescribed standard "solely due to natural causes and beyond the control of human agency", the article should be not "deemed to be adulterated". Referring to the answers given by the prosecution witnesses in their cross-examination and the depositions of the defence witnesses, he submitted that it is very difficult to differentiate between the mustard seeds and the argemone seeds. In other words, it was possible that there was mixture of argemone seeds in the mustard seeds which resulted in the presence of argemone oil in the mustard oil bought from the Appellant‟s shop and this was entirely beyond the control of the Appellant.

12. It was next submitted by Mr. Sikri that the method used to test the sample i.e. TLC method was not a reliable method and that the evidence of DW-3 in this regard has not been discussed by the trial Court. The Court finds that in the impugned judgment in para 21 the trial Court sets out what has been stated by DW-3 and concludes that the TLC method used by the CFL should be taken to indicate that the presence of argemone oil was above .01%. However, what has not been further discussed is the point made by DW-3 that both mycotoxin and argemone oil give similar fluorescence under the UV lamp and unless the High Performance Liquid Chromatography („HPLC‟) test was conducted the two contaminates i.e., argemone oil and mycotoxin could not be distinguished. DW-3 also sought to suggest that the presence of more than 1% of argemone oil in mustard oil might cause dropsy and anything below that would be safe.