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The State of Goa and Another v. Namita Tripathi

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 306Decided 3 Mar 2025
Crl.A. No.-001060-001060 - 2025 (arising out of SLP(Crl.) No.1959 of 2022)
Justice B.R. Gavai · Justice K.V. Viswanathan

Background

An inspection of the respondent's professional laundry business in Goa found it employed more than nine workers, used power-driven machinery, and lacked factory registration and licensing as required under the Factories Act, 1948 and the Goa Factories Rules. When a Magistrate issued process against the respondent for offences under Section 92 of the Act, the respondent got the Bombay High Court (Goa bench) to quash the proceedings on the ground that dry-cleaning/washing is a "service," not a "manufacturing process," and so the premises were not a "factory" at all.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that the Act of 1948 defines "manufacturing process" to expressly include washing, cleaning, or otherwise treating any article with a view to its use, and this statutory definition, being different from and broader than the one under other statutes like the Central Excise Act, must be applied on its own plain terms rather than imported concepts requiring a "transformation" into a new commercial product. Since the respondent's laundry indisputably employed more than the threshold number of workers and washed/cleaned clothes for delivery back to customers, it squarely fell within the statutory definitions of "manufacturing process" and "factory," making the High Court's reliance on an older, since-superseded precedent (about a different statute, the ESI Act, before it adopted the same definition) misplaced. The Court restored the criminal complaint and process for further proceedings before the Magistrate.

Lesson Learnt

When a law itself defines a term for its own purposes, that specific statutory definition governs, even if the activity (like a laundry or dry-cleaning shop) would ordinarily be thought of as a "service" rather than "manufacturing" in everyday language.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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