KRISHNA GOVINDA PAL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from the judgment and sentence of the learned Sessions Judge of Tipperah who, agreeing with the Assessors, found the appellant Krishna Gobinda Pal guilty of an offence under Section 471 read with Section 466, Indian Penal Code, and sentenced him to five years rigorous imprisonment.

(2.) It appears that a document of the year 1862 was entered in the register book of the Registration Office at Comilla, Volume I, Book 3, purporting to be a mokurari lease for 50 years in favour of the grandfather of the accused Girish Chandra Roy, who has been acquitted, coupled with an agreement to make the lease permanent on the expiry of 50 years, that is, from the year 1319. A copy of this document was obtained from the Registration Office and filed in a proceeding under Section 107, Criminal Procedure Code. We do not know what the meaning of the filing the document in such a proceeding is, but the evidence, which is very conflicting, comes from persons who were called upon to show cause in the 107 proceedings on the other side to the effect that they saw the appellant put this bit of paper on the table in front of the peshkar. The Magistrate s record would show that the witness Ram Kanai who is now dead produced the document in the witness-box and proved it, and the Magistrate says in a note in the middle of this evidence that the document was filed and established; the accused himself, who was a witness, stated to the Magistrate that there was such a document in the possession of his master Girish Chandra Roy, and he shortly described its contents and he said it had been filed. But he did not say that he filed it himself, although there was no possible reason why he should not have said so, as at that time there was no question as to the genuineness of the document. He also says that he first came to know of the existence of this lease for 50 years eleven years ago. He does not set up any case that the original lease was a permanent kaemi lease, and he gives a perfectly true account of the document as it appears in the register in the Registration Office.

(3.) The learned Judge has come to the conclusion that the transcript in the Registration Office is itself a forged interpolation made after the year 1910, and in proof of this he adduces the evidence of a number of other Registration Books in which there are what he calls obvious forgeries, and these apparently refer to documents relating to the same property. But we need hardly point out that a series of similar transactions which are not the offence charged can only be used as evidence of the intention of the person who forged the document, and not as evidence of forgery.