A case not provided for by the statute.

It is a corollary to the general rule of literal construction that nothing is to be added to or taken from a statute unless there are adequate grounds to justify the inference that the legislature intended something which it omitted to express.

It is an application of this principle that a statutory notification may not be extended so as to meet a casus omissus. As appears in the judgment of the Privy Council in Crawford v. Spooner, (1846) 6 Moo PC 1(9) : .& .we cannot aid the legislatures defective phrasing of the Act, we cannot add, and mend, and by construction, make up deficiencies which are left there.

++ It is not open to the Court to add something to or read something in the statute on basis of supposed intendment of the statute. It is not the function of this Court to supply the casus omissus, if there be one. As long as the presumption of innocence of the accused prevails in this country, the benefit of any lacuna or casus omissus must be given to the accused. The job of plugging the loopholes must strictly be left to the Legislature and not assumed by the Court. A court cannot breach a casus omissus and no canon of construction permits the Court to supply a lacuna in a statute; nor can Courts of law fill up the lacuna in an ill drafted and hasty legislation. Whether the omission is intentional or inadvertent is no concern to the Court

++ There is a series of decisions of various High Courts, of course with some exception, taking the view that a Magistrate before whom a person arrested by the competent authority under the FERA or Customs Act is produced, can authorise detention in exercise of his powers under Section 167. Otherwise the mandatory direction under the provision of Section 35(2) of FERA or 104(2) of the Customs Act, to take every person arrested before the Magistrate without unnecessary delay when the arrestee was not released on bail under sub-section (3) of those special Acts, will become purposeless and meaningless and to say that the Courts even in the event of refusal of bail have no choice but to set the person arrested at liberty by folding their hands as a helpless spectator in the face of what is termed as legislative causes omissus or legal flaw or lacuna, it will become utterly illogical and absurd.