RAM REKHA Vs. RAM SUNDER DUBE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from the judgment of the Subordinate Judge of Ghazipur. The only matter that he had to try in the action was with reference to a sale-deed for Rs. 8,500, which had been entered into by the father of the plaintiff on several grounds. The plaintiff, the son, made the usual regrettable charges against his father which seem to be a feature in many of these actions. Whatever attempt he made to prove the drinking and other alleged disgraceful and improvident acts of the father, were disbelieved by the Court. He comes before us as a plaintiff- appellant entitled to a very little sympathy, especially when one considers the fact that at the time of the action the father was residing apparently on terms of complete harmony with his family. The father did not go into the witness-box. The plaintiff denied at first any indebtedness at all of the father, but eventually admitted that there was an indebtedness of Rs. 6,500. That left in dispute two items only, one of Rs. 1,500 and the other of Rs. 500. The discussion on this Rs. 1,500 has opened up a rather curious state of things. When one turns to the sale- deed one finds that this item of Rs. 1,500 is an indebtedness alleged to have arisen "under slips for a long time. On adjustment of the accounts to-day, a of sum of Rs. 1,500, besides the amount of sarkhat, has been found due by me under slips to Janki Teli and others aforesaid." The original has been referred to, because on the translation as it stands the ordinary meaning would be that there was a sum of Rs. 1,500 evidenced by slips and there was a further sum evidenced under a sarkhat. On a reference to the original, the word alawa is put immediately before sharkhat; but that does not throw any light upon the difficulty and it has been suggested that the deed was so framed as to permit of a claim for Rs. 1,500 under slips and a further claim of an indefinite amount under sarkhat. For the purpose of this case we undoubtedly have to deal with one sum only, and it is the sum claimed under the sarkhat A 3. Now the sarkhat AA 3 is in form an account stated, and on the face of it gives rise to no suspicion, and is in every way an apparently regular document. If the defendants had simply based their case on an account stated and nothing else, and had brought no other document into the case to raise elements of suspicion, the defendants might have succeeded. It is always open to a debtor or creditor to go through accounts whether mutual or one sided only, to adjust those accounts, and to agree that there is a balance due from one to the other, and that very agreement that there is a balance due from one to the other is in itself a perfectly good cause of action, and does away with the necessity of going into the antecedent accounts and if the account stated is satisfactorily proved judgment must be given, notwithstanding that the party who has signed the account as correct wishes to re-open the account. It may, of course, be re- opened on certain allegations such as fraud, but that does not alter the general rule that an account stated is itself an agreement which can be sued upon. In this case, however, the defendants have relied upon other documents and in support of A 3 they have produced before the lower Court A 4. That is a document antecedent in date to A 3, and was regarded by the Judge as being of a suspicious character. He gives in his judgment in detail the matters which in his view make the document one on which it is unsafe to act. The Court is asked to give weight to it by the defendants themselves who bring it in as evidence supporting A 3. We ourselves have looked at the document. It has manifestly been altered in one or two places, and in our opinion a group of four items, though purporting to be widely apart in date, must have been written at one and the same time. That being so, that document far from assisting the case of the defendants, goes a long way to destroy it. Another element of suspicion undoubtedly is the statement in the sale deed, which prima facie put two kinds of indebtedness upon the borrower, namely, an indebtedness under slips and an indebtedness under a sarkhat. The defendants presumably keep books. A 4 is certainly not the only record in their business They produced no other documents whatever in support of their claim. THIS is one of those cases in which the Subordinate Judge having heard the witnesses, having applied his mind to the case, has come to a conclusion adverse to the defendants, and has disallowed the whole of the item of Rs. 1,500. If the matter had come before us in original trial and an opportunity had been given to ask one or two questions of the witnesses, it is conceivable we might have allowed that item to go through. But we are not prepared to overrule the learned Subordinate Judge on this matter of Rs. 1,500; and we agree that the item of Rs. 500 must go out because there was no attempt whatever made to prove that the deeds in question were for legal necessity.

(2.) THE result of this is that we affirm the decision of the learned Subordinate Judge; but we leave each party to bear their own costs of this appeal.