NAGARATHINAMMAL Vs. K.V. RANGASAMY CHETTIAR AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The first defendant is the petitioner. The revision petition is directed against the order of the Subordinate Judge of Erode in I.A. No. 659 of 1972 in O.S. No. 373 of 1971 seeking to send the account book to the Director, Government Finger Print and Hand writing Bureau, Simla, Himachal Pradesh, or to the State Forensic Science Laboratory Madras -4, to ascertain his opinion as to the age of the ink in writing at pages 62 to 64 and at pages 65 and 73 in the account book. The said application was opposed on the ground that the petition is not bona fide that it is belated and that the original cannot be sent out of court, and, in any event, the expert's opinion is useless as it is not binding on the court. The learned Subordinate Judge allowed the application and directed the document to be sent to the State Forensic Laboratory, Madras -4, for opinion. The petitioner was called upon to deposit Rs. 100, within two weeks from the date of the order. Against the said order, the present revision petition is filed.

(2.) The contention of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the application is belated, that the object of filing the application is to drag the trial of the suit unduly, that by reason of the decision of the Supreme Court in Shashi Kumar v/s. Subodh Kumar : A.I.R. 1964 S.C. 529 holding that an expert's opinion is useless and cannot take the place of substantive evidence, it is needless to send the document to an expert. It is no doubt true that an expert's opinion is not substantive evidence, but on that ground, request of a party to send a document for opinion as to hand writing or genuineness cannot always be negatived. The learned counsel further drew my attention to the judgment of Ramamurti, J. in T.A. Narasimhan v/s. Narayana Chettiar and another : (1968) 2 M.L.J. 48. There, the learned Judge had to consider the correctness of an order sending a disputed document to a private handwriting expert at Nagpur for his opinion. The learned Judge observed that the practice of sending original documents to handwriting experts should be deprecated. The learned Judge observed that the practice of allowing original documents to go out of the court's custody, is attendant with various risks and that it should be stopped. The said observations, in my opinion, have to be confined to the facts which the learned Judge was dealing with, viz., of sending original documents to a private expert, and the said observations cannot be applied where the request of a party is to send original document to a Government expert for his opinion, regarding genuineness, age of the writing, etc. The (sic) risks contemplated in sending such original documents outside court may not be present in such cases,

(3.) In the present case the document is directed by the court below to be sent to a Government expert, namely, the State Forensic Science Laboratory, Madras -4, for opinion and I see no harm in sending the original document to a Government expert for opinion. The revision petition, therefore, fails and is dismissed. There will be no order as to costs.