KAVANNA VANA KOWNDAPPA MUDALI Vs. VANJAMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Appellant was the defendant in a suit on a promissory note, dated 11 July, 1930 and pleaded two payments, one of Rs. 60, dated 6 August, 1931 and another of Rs. 280 alleged to have been made by his brother on 7 August, 1931. The first Court accepted the defendant's plea of discharge. In the course of the cross-examination of the defendant's witnesses a suggestion was made on behalf of the plaintiff that the motive for a false plea of discharge and the falsification of accounts in support thereof was a previous quarrel between one Sundaram Pillai, the accountant of the defendant's father, and the husband of the plaintiff. The first Court discredited this suggestion remarking that there was no document any evidence in support of the allegations made. When the matter came up in appeal the plaintiff filed a petition in the lower Court praying for the admission in evidence of a long series of- documents mostly relating to the year 1927, that is to say, 3 years before the suit promissory note, in order to illustrate and corroborate the allegation of enmity between Sundaram Pillai and the plaintiff's husband as a motive for the defendant to put forward a false story of discharge. The affidavit in support of this allegation alleges that the records in question were not in the possession of the plaintiff at the time of the hearing of the suit in the first Court, and the reason assigned for putting forward this evidence in appeal was in order to fill up the gap indicated in the lower Court's judgment where it was pointed out that there was no documentary evidence with reference to the suggestion referred to in cross-examination. The application was opposed and it was disposed of by the learned Subordinate Judge by an order in following terms: Admitted as they are essential for a satisfactory disposal of the appeal and were mentioned in the lower Court.

(2.) In the appellate judgment the learned Subordinate Judge refers to the circumstances for and against the story of discharge and then proceeds to deal at length with the motive suggested by the plaintiff for the alleged fabrication of false entries in the accounts of the plaintiff's brother. In dealing with this motive theory the learned Subordinate Judge lays great emphasis on the corroborative evidence regarding the quarrel between Sundaram Pillai and the plaintiff's husband afforded by the new documents Ex. B series and there can be no doubt that the learned Subordinate Judge was greatly influenced in arriving at a decision by the inference which he drew from those documents whereby he was constrained to hold that Sundaram Pillai, who was the defendant's father's accountant and was present at the trial of the suit in the lower Court, had a motive for malice towards the plaintiff's husband and probably influenced the defendant and got him to fabricate the evidence in support of a false discharge story.

(3.) With reference to the question whether the learned Subordinate Judge was wrong in admitting this evidence, my attention has been drawn to the well known case of Parsotim Thakur V/s. Lal Mohar Thakur (1931) L.R. 58 I.A. 254 : 10 Pat. 654 : 61 M.L.J. 489 (P.C.) wherein the Judicial Committee point out that: The provisions of Section 107 of the Civil Procedure Code as elucidated by Order 41, Rule 27 are clearly not intended to allow a litigant who has been unsuccessful in the lower Court to patch up the weak parts of his case and fill up omissions in the Court of Appeal.