GOPAL CHANDRA CHAKRAVARTI Vs. SURENDRA KUMAR ROY CHOWDHURY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the defendants in a mortgage suit. The mortgage was executed by defendant No. 1 who is not a party to the appeal. The appellants are two persons, one of whom took a lease of some property comprised in the mortgage and the other took a putni lease of properties equally encumbered. The plaintiffs sued on their mortgage and recovered judgment. The objection taken by the defendants is that the mortgage-deed was presented for registration more than four months after the execution, that to enable it to be registered under the law, the date was altered by the mortgagor and thereby registration was obtained which was not warranted by law. The mortgage was executed on the 24th April 1905. It was registered on the 21st September 1905, the date having been altered to the 25th June 1905. The lease taken by one of the appellants was not taken till September 1906, and the other some time after. The result, therefore, is that the leases were taken long after the registration of the mortgage-deed. Now, no question of fraud of any kind arises in the case because the mortgagor wrote on the deed an explanation pointing out that this change in the date of the deed had been made. The mortgagee accepted the deed with the altered date; so it must be taken that as between the mortgagor and the mortgagee the alteration was consented to; and as between them, the mortgage would take effect only from the later date to which the document had been altered. That being the state of things, in our opinion it is not open to the defendants, the lessees, to complain. Supposing it to be assumed for the purposes of argument that the deed was wrongly registered, there being no fraud, the mortgagor would be estopped from setting up this alteration in the deed as an answer to the claim of the mortgagee. In our view, the appellants having taken their leases subsequent to the alteration, in the absence of any fraud, cannot stand in any better position than the mortgagor and are equally estopped from taking the objection which they rely upon. The matter would have been different if in any way the appellants had been defrauded. As prudent men, they ought to have inquired at the registration office to see whether there was any encumbrance. If they had done so, they would have discovered that there was this mortgage before their leases. Under these circumstances, we must affirm the judgment of the lower Appellate Court and dismiss the appeal with costs.