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1986 DIGILAW 272 (PAT)

Ishwar Lal Kedia v. Mahabir Prasad alias Mahabir Prasad Kedia

1986-08-29

S.SHAMSUL HASAN

body1986
JUDGMENT : S. Shamsul Hasan, J.–This application is by the plaintiffs in a suit praying for removal of certain alleged encroachments said to have been made by the defendants on the land claimed to be that of the plaintiffs. 2. The plaintiffs filed an application to admit into evidence, apart from an ORDER :sheet of the Court, the certified copy of the arbitration award of a prior partition suit case that was made the rule of the Court. This prayer was refused. Hence this application. 3. The material that was desired to be brought on the record, as I have stated above, was the ORDER :sheet of Title Suit No.3 of 1937 and the award made the rule of the Court. The Court below admitted the ORDER :sheets into evidence and marked them Exhibits 1 and 5. In the last ORDER :of the ORDER :sheet, it is clearly stated that on the receipt of the award and non-filling of any objection to it by the plaintiffs and the defendants of that suit, it was made the rule of the Court. The award, however, was not traced from the record room nor was it available in the record produced along with the ORDER :sheet. These documents were called for by the plaintiffs by filing a petition before the Court below which has ORDER :ed their production. In my view, therefore, sufficient effort was made for obtaining the original copy of the award and when it was found to be missing from the record, as it appears from the impugned ORDER :, the certain copy, obtained in the year 1938, was rightly filed. Undoubtedly, therefore, sufficient foundation being laid for the disappearance of the original, the requirement of section 65 of the Evidence Act was fully satisfied for admitting the certified copy as secondary evidence. If the primary evidence was lost, secondary evidence will certainly be taken into evidence. 4. Then section 90 of the Evidence Act comes into operation straightway and being a document of more than 30 years origin, no formal proof will be necessary and the certified copy will have to be admitted into evidence. I may clarify that admitting this certified copy into evidence. It does not mean that the defendants are disentitled to assail the veracity and reliability of the evidence in all its aspect. I may clarify that admitting this certified copy into evidence. It does not mean that the defendants are disentitled to assail the veracity and reliability of the evidence in all its aspect. The Court below completely misdirected itself in going into a channel that was entirely irrelevant. The question of the certified copy being a public document was not even required to be examined. If the Court below had examined the provisions of sections 65 and 90 of the Evidence Act, it would not have gone into the ambit of a public document. Not admitting the document, which was clearly admissible in law, amounts to improper exercise of jurisdiction and deserves interference. 5. Learned counsel for the opposite party argued at some length and placed numerous decisions on the scope of this Court under section 115 of the Code of Civil Procedure and submitted that interpretation of such document is by a point of the law which does not warrant any interference under the present jurisdiction. Nobody can doubt the ratio of these cases nor the value of the submission of Mr. H. R. Das, learned counsel for the opposite party had they been made in its proper place. In this application, the only question was the admissibility of a document into evidence and not appraisal of the evidence which is the duty of the trial Court and the appellate Court thereafter. I may state here that the defendants are the successors in interest of these who were party to the arbitration award. 6. In the result, the application is allowed with costs and the impugned ORDER :is hereby set aside. The Court below is directed to admit the certified copy of the document into evidence. This does mean that I have held anything that would justify that an inference or a submission that the document has now become unassailable in its intrintic merit. Application allowed.