Miscellaneous | The Mistry Case

A chemist charged with making dodgy sales of sample medicines, challenged a law which enabled regulatory inspectors to search pharmacies without a warrant. This produced the first case to reach the Constitutional Court on search and seizure. Writing for the Court, Justice Sachs observed that in the apartheid era South Africa had been a police state for the majority of the population; the police could enter the homes of black people at will to demand passes and search for liquor. The Bill of Rights now prevented these invasions. Search warrants granted by magistrates on reasonable grounds were required. There was no problem, however, with inspectors descending on pharmacies unannounced and without warrants to check up that regulatory standards were being upheld. But the relevant law was unconstitutional to the extent that, as in this case, it allowed inspectors to conduct searches without warrants with the specific intention of collecting evidence for a criminal prosecution.