CHHAGANLAL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) , A.J.C. 1. The applicant Chhaganlal Ramnarayan was, by order of the Deputy Commissioner, Akola, prosecuted Under Section 64(c), Stamp Act. He was convicted by the City Magistrate, Akola, and fined Rs. 500. In appeal the conviction was maintained, but the fine was reduced to Rs. 250. The applicant is a sahukar of Talap, Tahsil Mangrulpir, District Akola, and the facts which have led to his prosecution are admitted. The only question is the legal inference to be drawn from these facts. The offence of doing an act calculated to deprive the Government of duty under the Stamp Act has been alleged in connexion with three sets of documents, rujus and chits taken from three debtors, Suryabhan, Tukaram and Bhiku, for loans of Rs. 1,150, 1,120 and 1,750 respectively. The rujus of these three men are to be found at pp. 12, 5 and 15 of the applicant's account book. These examples have been taken out of many, and the contention of the prosecution was that each ruju was executed on the same day as, and together with its corresponding chitti, and the two formed one instrument constituting a bond or agreement which was insufficiently stamped. The ruju bears a 1-anna stamp only.

(2.) THE applicant's learned counsel contends that these two documents do not constitute a bond. He says that there is no stipulation as to the date of payment. That however is no argument, as it is no part of the definition of 'bond' that such date should be stated. Then it is said that in the case of a promissory note it is permissible to stipulate about interest, and so there is no harm if such a stipulation is appended to it. A ruju however is in fact not a promissory note, and is not stamped as such and the analogy is an unsound one. Again it is said that an express declaration I will pay makes no difference, as the obligation to pay is implied in an acknowledgment in any case. As I shall presently show, it does make a difference. We must turn to the definition of 'bond' as given in Section 2(5), Stamp Act. It includes (5)(b): any instrument attested by a witness and not payable to order or bearer, whereby a person obliges himself to pay money to another.

(3.) NEXT it is argued that the prosecution has not proved any intention to defraud Government. It is suggested that the applicant was acting bona fide, thinking that no stamp was required; and as the obligation was on the debtor to supply the stamp, the responsibility, it is said, is also of the debtor. As against that view, we must take the facts that the creditor has been making a regular practice of securing his loans by this ruju cum chitti system and had a stock of printed forms of chitti which he supplied to his debtors. Again it is not denied that he had been made to pay-duty and penalty in respect of such documents before. He was well aware that execution of them involved loss of revenue to Government. From the circumstances I think it can be fairly presumed that it was the creditor and not the debtors who prescribed this method of evading the law by taking separate chittis to supplement the rujus of the debtors in his account books. A further argument is adduced that Section 64(c) must be interpreted as ejusdem generis with the preceding Sub-sections (a) and (b), which sub-sections are not applicable to the present case. In this connexion Chhakmal Chopra v. Emperor 1917 Cal 665 is referred to. That case certainly does favour the applicant's view. The learned Judges however do not give reasons for holding that Sub-section (c) is restricted by what precedes it, and with all due respect it seems to me their dictum is open to criticism. It has in fact been adversely criticised in Mulla and Pratt's treatise on the Stamp Act, p. 286 of the 1924 edition. The whole passage is instructive and has my approval and I reproduce it: Sub-section (e). This sub-section is new and did not occur in the Act of 1879. It is submitted that it strikes at the oases referred to in the note Under Section 62 of a person intentionally receiving an instrument that is not duly stamped. Such receipt has been held not to be abetment of an offence Under Section 62, but it is submitted that it is now an offence under this sub-section. Unfortunately the sub-section has not been so construed in the only case in which it was considered. This was the case of 1917 Cal 665 (8), where a pleader money lender accepted an agreement to pay a debt stamped with only one anna in his, i.e. the pleader's, khata book. The Court held that the offence Under Section 61 was committed by the debtor not by the pleader and referred to the case of Queen Empress v. Somasundaram Chetti (1900) 28 Mad 155 apparently for the proposition that mere receipt of an unstamped instrument does not constitute abetment But the Court did not consider the cage of Empress v. Bahadur Singh (1885) AWN 30 or whether the fact that the accused procured the making of the entry in his own book was not evidence of abetment. Then as to Sub-section (c) the Court construed it as referring to acts of a like nature to those which are specified in sub Ss, (a) and (b); it is difficult to imagine what sort of acts these could be. It is submitted that the words "any other" repel any such limitation and that the proper construction of the sub-section is as suggested above.