MOHAMMED OSMAN MEHTAR Vs. R ABDUL AZIZ

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants are the legal representatives of the deceased defendant who had succeeded before the trial Court in establishing the denial of execution of the suit-pronote for a sum of Rs. 12,000/- in favour of the plaintiff. On appeal, the appellate Court reversed the findings.

(2.) In a suit based on negotiable instrument, when execution is denied, burden is on the plaintiff to establish due execution by the defendant. Some admitted signatures on written statement and the vakalath as well as some other documents in evidence were compared by hand-writing expert with the disputed signatures i.e. signatures on the suit pronote and the consideration receipt. From the records, it is seen that disputed signatures and the admitted signatures were photographed and blown to very large size, so that uniformity of strokes, the character of the hand-writing, formation of the loops and shirts and other such factors which are necessary in such matters could be examined. The result of such comparison has been submitted to the Court. The lower appellate Court has chosen to accept the hand-writing expert's view on account of the dissimilarities observed being of routine character which would occur in the normal course of writing and not some thing which would be on account of the failure on the part of the forger, if any, to imitate such dissimilarities. When the lower appellate Court records a finding, that more or less should bind the High Court, unless there is glaring perversity in the reasoning adopted by the lower appellate Court in recording that finding, I find no such glaring or perverse reasoning by the lower appellate Court in coming to the conclusion that the signatures on Exs. P1 and P2 were executed by the deceas'ed husband and father of the appellants.

(3.) Really no question of law as such arises for consideration in this appeal. Therefore, this Court must respect the finding recorded by the lower appellate Court and those findings are based on expert evidence which the lower appellate Court chose to accept and the expert witness was subjected to cross-examination by the defendant.