FULCHI MANDAL Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THERE are two appellants in this appeal. Both have been convicted Under Section 471. read with Section 467 of the Indian Penal Code (hereinafter referred to as the Code), and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for five years each. It may be also mentioned here that they had also been prosecuted and charged for the offence Under Section 467 of the Code, but the learned trial court has recorded an order of acauittal in respect of that charee.

(2.) THE relevant facts, which have given rise to this appeal may be briefly stated as follows. Fekan Mandal. who figured as P.W. 1 in the case, was a decree holder, having obtained a decree on the basis of a hand-note against the appellants, who were judgment-debtors. Fekan- Mandal filed an execution case for the execution of the decree and this was registered as Execution Case No. 25 of 1960. In the exe-. cution case a petition, purporting to be a petition of satisfaction and purporting to have been signed and executed by Fekan Mandal decree-holder, was filed on the 8th November, 1960. but, some how or other, it appears that no notice of this petition was taken until the 6th December. 1960. It was on this day that' a mention of this petition was made in the order-sheet of the execution case. THE decree-Holder. Fekan Mandal. thereafter filed a petition which was registered as Miscellaneous Judicial Case No. 195 of 1961 in the Munsif's First Court at Bhagal-pur. It was urged in the petition that no such petition of satisfaction had been signed by the decree-holder and it had not been filed by him and that the decree-holder had not received a single farthing in respect of the decree. THEre were allegations also to the effect that the petition did not contain the signature of the lawyer of the decree-holder and it was not known as to who was the scribe, who had described himself as Arjun Mandal, Karpardaz of the decree-holder. THE Judgment-debtors thereafter filed a rejoinder to the effect that the petition of satisfaction was a genuine document and that the decree-holder in spite of having received ,the money dishonestly was disowning the satisfaction petition.

(3.) IT may be also mentioned here that the defence taken by the appellants in the sessions trial was to the same effect as in the miscellaneous case before the learned Munsif, about which I have stated above. There was an assertion on behalf of the appellants to the effect that the document was a genuine one and there were also allegations to the effect that one Mahendra Mandal who was a son of the decree-holder Fekan Mandal. was a person who had acted dishonestly on many other occasions, and, therefore, he might have perpetrated some kind of fraud. IT may be mentioned here that this Mahendra Mandal was also examined at the sessions trial.