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9. Now, the offences under Sections 465, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code are non-cognizable Offences. An offence under Section 420 of the Code is a congizable offence. Now, Mr. Somjee for accused No. 1 has invited our attention to Section 196-A of the Criminal Procedure Code and Section 186A says that an offence of criminal conspiracy to commit non-cognizable offences cannot be taken cognisance of by a Court unless there is a sanction by the State Government or a Chief Presidency Magistrate. Mr. Somjee contends that since offences under Sections 465, 468 and 471 are non-cognizable offences and since an offence of criminal conspiracy to commit such offences cannot be taken cognisance of without the sanction as required by Section 196-A of the Criminal Procedure Code and since no such sanction was obtained from the State Government or the Chief Presidency Magistrate in this case, the trial of the accused was void 'ab initio.' It is true, says Mr. Somjee, that an offence of criminal conspiracy to commit an offence of cheating under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code is cognizable and the taking of cognisance of that offence by a Court requires no sanction either from the State Government or from the Chief Presidency Magistrate or from any officer. But, Mr. Somjee says that in this case the charge was one composite charge under Section 120-B read with Sections 465, 468, 471 and 420 read with Section 511, that the trial was one and that this is not a case where the trial for an offence under Section 420 could have been severed from the trial for offences under Sections 465. 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code. Therefore, says Mr. Somjee,' since the trial of the accused for an offence of criminal conspiracy to commit offences under Sections 465, 468 and 471 was void 'ab initio' for want of sanction, the whole trial was void and bad.

12. Next Mr. Somjee has drawn our attention to the language of Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code itself and he says that the provisions of Section 420 of the Code will not apply to the facts of this case. He says that Section 420 would only apply when the offence of cheating was committed first and there was a dishonest inducement of the person cheated thereafter. He says that before a Court could convict a person of an offence of attempting to cheat, namely an offence under Section 420 read with Section 511 of the Indian Penal Code, it must be satisfied that the offence of cheating was first committed by the accused person and that thereafter he had attempted to Induce the person cheated dishonestly to do a certain thing. We are of the view that this reading of the section by Mr. Somjee is not a correct reading. There is no doubt that an offence under Section 420 read with Section 511 would be committed by a person who attempts to cheat another person and thereby attempts to induce him to do one or the other of the acts mentioned in Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code. In this contention of Mr. Somjee, therefore, we do not see any force.

13. Then Mr. Somjee has advanced another contention before us in regard to the, applicability of Section 420 to the facts of the present case. Section 420 reads thus:

"Whoever cheats and thereby dishonestly induces the person deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to make, alter or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security etc. etc."

Mr. Somjee contends that an offence under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code is an offence against property and that, therefore, the prosecution must prove that before the accused person, namely the alleged cheat, induced another person to deliver a particular thing, the said thing was the property of somebody else, i.e. somebody other than the accused. Mr. Somjee's argument obviously is that since the import licence which Goldberg India Ltd., attempted to get from the office of the Chief Controller of Imports, Bombay, was of no value to the said office or to the State so long as it was with that office and had not gone into the possession of the accused, the licence could not be said to be "property" within the meaning of Section 420, and if the office of the Chief Controller of Imports was induced to part with that licence in favour of the accused, it could not be said that the accused had induced it to deliver "property" to them.

14. It is clear, therefore, on the authority of the judicial decisions referred to in the above-mentioned quotation, that the language of the heading of a chapter does not control the sections to be found in that particular chapter. It is to be regarded only as a preamble to the sections which follow. In our view, the word "property" occurring in Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code does not necessarily mean that the thing of which a delivery is dishonestly desired by the person who cheats must have a money value or a market value in the hand of the person cheated. Even if the thing has no money value in the hand of the person cheated, but becomes a thing of value in the hand of the person who may get possession of it as a result of the cheating practised by him, it would still fall within the connotation of the term "property". Now, if the word "property" in Section 420 is taken to mean a thing which has a value while it is in the hand of the person cheated, even so in this particular case we are of the view that the import licence which was sought to be got by the accused from the office of the Chief Controller of Imports, Bombay, was property within the meaning of Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code.