The Penalties, and the Rest of the Indian Forest Act

In one line

The last two chapters of the Act are about the Forest-officer, the money, and the duty the Act places on everyone who lives near a forest.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: section 70 applies the Cattle-trespass Act, 1871; section 72 allows the State Government to invest a Forest-officer with the powers of a civil court, a search warrant and an inquiry; section 73 makes Forest-officers public servants; section 74 indemnifies acts done in good faith; section 75 forbids a Forest-officer to trade in forest produce; section 76 is the residual rule-making power and section 77 the residual penalty; section 79 binds persons living near a forest to assist; section 82 makes money due recoverable as an arrear of land-revenue; section 84 deems land needed under the Act to be needed for a public purpose for the acquisition law; and section 85A saves the rights of the Central Government.

Cattle, and the money

Section 70. Cattle trespassing in a reserved forest, or in a portion of a protected forest lawfully closed to grazing, are deemed to be cattle doing damage to a public plantation within section 11 of the Cattle-trespass Act, 1871, and may be seized and impounded by a Forest-officer or Police-officer.

Section 71 allows the State Government to fix the fines in place of those under section 12 of that Act, subject to a ceiling printed in the section in the currency of 1927: ten rupees for an elephant, two rupees for a buffalo or camel, one rupee for a horse, bull, bullock or cow, and eight annas for a calf, ass, pig, sheep, goat or kid.

That list is worth quoting in an answer on the age of this statute. A ceiling of eight annas has not been altered in the central text; the Act is enforced today on figures that no longer describe anything.

Section 82, recovery. All money payable to the Government under the Act or the rules, or on account of the price of forest produce or of expenses incurred in executing the Act in respect of it, may, if not paid when due, be recovered as an arrear of land-revenue.

Section 83, lien. Such money is a first charge on the produce, which a Forest-officer may take possession of until it is paid, and sell by public auction if it is not; the surplus is forfeited to the Government if not claimed within two months of the sale.

Section 85 allows the whole sum named in a bond given under the Act to be recovered on breach as an arrear of land-revenue, notwithstanding section 74 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872. That displaces the ordinary rule that a stipulated sum is recoverable only up to reasonable compensation, and it is the sharpest private-law consequence in the statute.