S ANAND PRAKASH Vs. OSWAL TRADING AGENCY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This suit for the recovery of balance of the price of goods said to have been sold to the defendants involves a difficult question of considerable public importance viz., whether a claim arising out of a transaction entered into between the parties otherwise than in the open market and intended to be carried out with the aid of unaccounted funds, popularly called the "black... money" and to defraud public reyenues is invalid and unenforceable.

(2.) The plaintiff, a registered partnership carrying on wholesale business in textiles and hosiery goods in a large way as a representative of a number of leading manufacturing units and having number of sister concerns, claims to have supplied on various dates between October 21, 1969 and December 28. 1969, hosiery goods of the total value of Rs. 1,68,059.25 to defendant No. 2 carrying on business in the name and style of defendant No. 1 against the said defendant's chits out of which the said defendant is said to have paid a sum of Rs. 25.000.00 thereby leaving a balance of Rs. 1,58,857.11 inclusive of interest at 12% per annum in accordance with the terms of the contract pursuant to which the goods were supplied. It is further claimed that the aforesaid chits contained the details of the goods, such as their description, quality, value and freight etc., and were duly signed by the said defendant No. 2 at the time of delivery; that the delivery was followed by regular bills containing all the details and the transactions and the payment recovered from the defendants in cash were duly reflected in the books of accounts of the plaintiff which were duly maintained in the ordinary course of business.

(3.) The defendants deny that any legal or valid contract of sale for the supply of goods was ever entered into between the parties or the goods as alleged were either purchased or received by the defendants from the plaintiff. It is contended that the bills are fake and fictitious and so are the entries in the books of accounts of the plaintiff and that the suit is based on a false claim as a counter-blast to the complaint of a criminal offence filed by the defendant against the plaintiff for fraud and should be dismissed with costs. It is further averred that the chits purporting to be delivery challans said to represent the delivery of goods to the defendant contained interpolations, over-writings and are suspicious in character: that these were never signed in token of receipt of goods and "the plaintiffs have been procuring requirements of goods from time to time from the answering defendant on these chits which the plaintiffs were required to deliver later on as and when they received such goods from the wholesale dealers of the manufacturers"; that the plaintiff normally sent goods with regular delivery challans followed by bills on which plaintiff obtained the signature of the buyer; that the bills in the present case were also made from one bill book in a consecutive order showing thereby that the transactions were made up: that no payment towards the transactions in dispute was made by the defendant to the plaintiff and a sum of Rs. 25,000.00, referred to by the plaintiff. represented a payment made by the defendant to the plaintiff towards another transaction in which the plaintiff did not deliver the .goods even though they received the payment and got the goods released from the transporter and this transaction forms subject-matter of a criminal action filed by the defendant against the plaintiff.