SADHU RAM Vs. RATTAN KUMAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) RESPONDENT 1 and 2 filed the rent petition against the present revision petitioner for eviction from the tenanted premises on the ground of sub-letting, non-user and bona fide requirement. The bona fide requirement of respondents 1 and 2 was not believed. However, the ejectment order was passed on the ground of sub-letting and non-user. The appeal filed by the petitioner was also dismissed by the appellate authority and hence the petitioner has filed the present revision petition challenging the judgments of both the courts.

(2.) ADMITTEDLY there is a partnership deed on record, Exhibit R-2. Learned counsel appearing for the petitioner has read over to me the contents of the document, which mentions about the sharing of the profits also. There is also a recital in the document that after the dissolution of the partnership, petitioner alone shall be considered as tenant. However, the partnership deed is not believed and the courts below have considered the transaction between the petitioner and respondent No. 3 to be sham. Even though there may be a clause for sharing of the profits in the partnership deed, but it is not shown that the profits were actually shared and the business was carried out, when this could have been shown by the petitioner or respondent No. 3 by producing the necessary document such as bank pass book, cheque books and books of account etc. This is not done. It is not the case of the petitioner that he was not in possession of such documents. When this is the position, the principle of the case in Gopal Krishna Ketkar v. Mohamed Hazi Latif and others, AIR 1968 SC 1413 will apply and the petitioner being possessed of the best evidence to show the partnership having not produced the necessary documents, adverse inference has to be drawn. Merely producing of the partnership agreement will not absolve a tenant from his liability to prove the partnership, because if that is done, all sub-tenants will be getting illegal support of alleged partnerships.

(3.) IT is also held therein that where a partner brought in as his arrest (asset ?) tenancy in the premises in which the partnership business was to be carried on, share the profits only and was to get a fixed percentage of the profits or the further facts that the said partner was not to operate the bank accounts there being nothing intrinsically wrong in law from constituting a partnership in the manner it was done and it could not be said that no genuine partnership had come into existence.