Section 69: The plaintiff, who was charged with murder raised objection to being

69. The plaintiff, who was charged with murder raised objection to being tried by a jury of men only, on the ground that those provisions, by excluding women from jury service, violated sections 3 and 16 of the Constitution the combined effect of which was to forbid discrimination by reason of sex. HELD dismissing the plaintiff’s action, the omission of sex from the grounds of discrimination in section 16 of the Constitution appeared to be intentional; the implied guarantee against discrimination proclaimed in section 3 related expressly to the enjoyment of each of the rights and freedoms set out in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of that section; the guarantee in section 3 had, consequently, no separate existence; but a measure which in itself conformed to the requirements of the particular section of the Constitution affording protection to the right or freedom concerned may nevertheless infringe that section, when read in conjunction with section 3, on the ground that it was discriminatory; section 16, on other hand, applied to all enactments whether they affected right or freedom protected by the Constitution. [Issue 1] CON – 186 Revised Laws of Mauritius The question to be decided was whether the plaintiff’s complaint related actually to a breach of one of his fundamental rights or freedoms; the plaintiff, as a party charged with a criminal offence, could not in this instance complain that because he belonged to the male sex he was not being given the protection of his right as an accused party under section 10 of the Constitution. His action must for that reason fail; but even assuming that the prohibition against discriminatory laws in section 16 included also those which discriminated on the ground of sex, the provisions of the enactments which were under attack in this action were not, having regard to the local conditions, discriminatory within the meaning of “discriminatory” as used in section 16. Jaulim v DPP (1976).