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Penalty for injuring ballot boxes or ballot papers.
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46.—(1) Any person who commits any of the following offences that is to say:—
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(a) without lawful authority takes a ballot box out of the custody of a returning officer or of a presiding officer or of any person to whose care or custody a returning officer shall lawfully have entrusted such ballot box; or
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(b) maliciously destroys, mutilates or injures any ballot box; or
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(c) maliciously destroys, tears or defaces any ballot paper;
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(d) counterfeits the official mark;
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(e) removes, destroys or damages any instrument for stamping the official mark on ballot papers or makes or has in his possession any imitation or counterfeit of any such instrument;
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shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any period not exceeding one year or on conviction on indictment to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any period not exceeding two years or penal servitude for any period not less than three years nor more than five years.
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(2) Every person who—
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(a) forges or fraudulently defaces or fraudulently destroys any nomination paper, or delivers to the returning officer any nomination paper, knowing the same to be forged; or
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(b) forges or counterfeits any ballot paper or the official mark on any ballot paper; or
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(c) without due authority supplies any ballot paper to any person; or
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(d) fraudulently puts into any ballot box any paper other than the ballot paper which he is authorised by law to put in; or
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(e) fraudulently takes out of the polling station any ballot paper; or
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(f) without due authority opens, or otherwise interferes with any ballot box;
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shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any period not exceeding one year or on conviction on indictment to imprisonment with or without hard labour for any period not exceeding two years or penal servitude for any period not less than three years nor more than five years.
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