JUDGMENT Mears, Knight C.J., Lindsay and Dalal, JJ. - We invited Ahmad Ashraf to give us some reasons which would justify his having identified himself with Raghubir Prasad in the answer of the 10th of January. 2. He could really give no explanation to show that he had any honest belief in the genuineness of the new case set up in paragraph 5 or of the charges of forgery, collusion and fraud made against the Plaintiffs and officials in the copying and record departments. 3. His defence really amounted to this, that he was entitled to sign anything that Raghubir Prasad submitted to him, that no matter how unfounded or scandalous the statements might be and how great an abuse of the privileges of counsel or of the processes of the court, he was protected by the fact that the document had been drafted by a man senior to him. 4. This sort of defence has been put up more than once, and we wish the profession to understand that a man who signs his name to a document makes himself thereby in every way as responsible for it ,as if he was the original drafter of it. If it turns out that the document is one which no man acting honsetly could in the circumstances have drafted, then he will be bound to answer for every word, line, sentence and paragraph, and it will not be the least defence that some body else wrote it out and he "only signed it." Signature implies association and carries responsibility. We are of opinion that Ahmad Ashraf having already been told that forgeries had Deen committed, and having accepted that statement, and being, as he says, frightened on the 8th of January, could not honestly have believed the assertions of forgery by the Plaintiffs and court officials alleged by Raghubir Prasad on the 10th of January. Even if the very definite statements in the application for review as to the actual non-existence of X, Y and Z had been doubted by him, a visit to the Collector's office and a five minutes' inspection of the registers would have convinced him of what he already had little doubt about, that the Defendants were the forgers and not the Plaintiffs. 5. 5. We therefore find that Ahmad Ashraf did on the 10th of January, 1924, join with Raghubir Prasad in filing the document of that date, and that he well knew that the petition contained false statements, and that these were made to deceive the court and fraudulently and dishonestly to defeat the application. 6. The second part of the charge against Ahmad Ashraf can be dealt with quite shortly. 7. When he was examined as a witness on the 24th of September, 1924, the Magistrate was anxious to ascertain to what extent he had been previously connected with Sheo Autar, Deo Narain Pande and the Defendants. He said: -''I had no concern with Sheo Autar, Deo Narain and the Defendants from before and.to the best of my recollection I did not appear as a pleader for them in any case previous to this." He, in fact, was at the very time appearing for the Defendants in another case which had been instituted shortly before No. 298 of 1923 and he was in fact engaged in August 1924 (i.e. a month before making his deposition) in execution proceedings in that very case. 8. He spught to justify his answer to the Magistrate by telling us that he thought the point of the question turned upon the words "from before "--that he made a mistake in not remembering that the other case was in fact earlier in date. He also said that on the 24th of September, 1924, he had forgotten that he had signed three papers in August with reference to the execution proceedings. 9. These answers did not meet with' our approval, nor did we give weight to the argument which was addressed to us. It was said, as it has been before in these cases, that it is the common practice of clerks in the mofassil to draft applications and documents even of importance and that the vakil almost invariably signs them without reading them. Ahmad Ashraf explained that he had not read any one of the documents in the execution proceedings and that was why he remembered nothing about the concurrent case. 10. Again we wish it to be understood that a defence of this kind will not be accepted and that if a legal practitioner puts his signature to a document, he will be deemed to have read it and to carry it in his recol. 10. Again we wish it to be understood that a defence of this kind will not be accepted and that if a legal practitioner puts his signature to a document, he will be deemed to have read it and to carry it in his recol. lection to the extent that an ordinarily competent, careful and reasonable man would carry it, and he will be bound by all the implications arising from it just as much as if he had written every word of it with his own hand. Practitioners must realize that if they make, or associate themselves with, statements which they know are dishonest and untruthful, for the purpose of misleading the court, they must on proof of misconduct bear personal responsibility, and that it will be no defence for them to say that it was done in the interests of the client or at his instigation or at the instigation of a colleague at the bar, or that they were so negligent in the matter that they did not read the document or consider it at all. 11. We find the "second charge proved against Ahmad Aishraf, and we suspend him on both charges for six (6) months, such periods of suspension to run concurrently. 12. If, subsequently, cases similar to this are brought before the court, we shall not show the future wrongdoers the leniency we now extend to Ahmad Ashraf. We assess the fee of the learned Government Advocate at Rs. 200.