BAIJ NATH BHAGAT Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has been convicted of the offence of fraudulently or dishonestly using as genuine a certified copy of a decree which he knew or had reason to believe to be a forged document. In 1935 he brought a money suit on a handnote for Rs. 250. The suit was decreed on 4 July 1935, and the decree was signed on the 8 of that month. On 21 July 1938, a petition for execution of the decree was filed in the Court of the Munsif by Babu Satnarain Bhagat, pleader and brother of the petitioner. This petition was accompanied by a certified copy of the decree in which the date of the judgment was palpably altered in two places from 4 to 24 July 1935, and the date of the decree was similarly altered from the 8 to 28 of that month. On the following day Shamsuddin Ahmad, the Civil Court mohurrir who had received the execution petition, compared the copy of the decree with the money suit register and discovered that the dates looked suspicious both in the copy and in the money suit register. After consulting his colleagues, he brought the matter to the notice of the Munsif, who also examined the entries, and pending the receipt of the original record of the suit from the district headquarters, held an enquiry.

(2.) It was thus that on 26 July 1938, he questioned the petitioner and was told by him that he had obtained the certified copy of the decree, that in the certified copy the date of disposal of the money suit was copied as 24 July 1935, and that "it was all along as it is now." The Munsif also examined his mohurrirs, the pleader, the pleader's clerk Ajab Lal and the writer of the execution petition, Baleshwar Prasad, who happened to be the clerk of another brother of the petitioner, who had also been a member of the bar but was then a paralytic. As a result of the Munsif's inquiry the petitioner was placed on his trial. There is no dispute now that the execution petition with the dates as we find them was filed by the petitioner's pleader on 21 July 1938. There is also no dispute that the dates in the original decrees were 4 and 8 July, 1935.

(3.) The copyist who prepared the certified copy filed on behalf of the petitioner was examined as a Court wit-ness and swore that he had copied the dates correctly, and denied that the figure "2" in three places in the dates given in the certified copy (twice before the 4 and once before 8 July), was his writing. The evidence of the copyist was supported by the circumstances, for the copy was prepared in August 1935, when there was no reason" whatsoever to tamper with the dates, and "towards the end of the month the copy was amended by order of the Court in respect of two items (besides the total) in the statement of costs given, as usual, at the end of the decree. It seems to have been suggested in the trial Court that Samsuddin, the Court mohurrir, may have altered the dates. The suggestion was repelled by the Magistrate and was, quite rightly, not repeated before the Sessions Judge.