NARINDER KAUR Vs. JAGIR SINGH AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff filed the suit contending that the defendant had been only a tenant under him but he claims to have purchased the property from him on 13.11.1985. The suit was, therefore, for a declaration that the sale deed dated 13.11.1985 was a forged and fabricated document and that the document was required to be set aside. The defendant contended that the document was true and it had been executed duly by him for a valuable consideration.

(2.) After institution of the suit the defendant had died and the wife had been defending the suit. At the trial, in a situation where the plaintiff was denying that he had ever executed the document and would state that the document was a forgery, the defendant made no attempt to produce the original sale deed but was content with filing a certified copy of the document and sought to prove the sale deed by summoning the original register from the Registrar's office to say that the document was registered on that date. He also examined a scribe who gave evidence to the effect that he had executed the sale deed. But none of the witnesses who had reported to have signed the document as such were examined.

(3.) Both the Courts below held that the defendant had not established that the sale deed had been true. The defendant had made reliance on the fact that pursuant to the sale, there had been a mutation effected in respect of the municipal entry in his name and therefore, the sale deed must be taken as proved. When the suit was instituted on 14.09.1996 contending that the sale deed was not true, the mere mutation effected between the date of sale and the date of institution of suit cannot be in any sense a proof of the sale deed itself. The defendant did not give any evidence about proof of loss of original or any of the justifiable circumstance as set out under Sec. 65 of the Indian Evidence Act for reception of secondary evidence. Finding that even the witnesses had not been examined, the trial Court held that the requirements of Sec. 68 had not been established.