DADABHAI MUSSE VALLI Vs. NIWAJKHAN NATHANKHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiff sued the defendant to recover Rs. 219-14-0 as due upon two rent notes, dated respectively the 27th June 1909 and the 10th July 1910, the dates fixed for payment of the rent being the 13th March 1910 and the 2nd March 1911, respectively. THE suit was not brought until the year 1915, but the plaintiff alleged that part payments of Rs. 15 had been made by the defendant. THE part payments were recorded by endorsements which the plaintiff admitted were in his hand writing, but he contended that the endorsement being signed by the defendant was a sufficient acknowledgment within Section 20 of the Limitation Act. That section provides that "a fresh period of limitation shall be computed from the time when the payment was made, provided that, in the case of part payment of the principal of a debt, the fact of the payment appears in the handwriting of the person making the same." Now, in these endorsements, the fact of the payment appears in the handwriting of the plaintiff, the person receiving, and not the person making it, and it has been held by the Calcutta High Court in Santishwar Mahanta v. Lakhikanta Mahanta (1908) 35 Cal.813 that a mere signature to an assertion of payment is not sufficient to bring the case within the proviso to Section 20 of the Limitation Act. In that conclusion we concur. Otherwise it is difficult to understand what is meant by the stipulation that the fact of payment should appear in a particular handwriting. A mere signature is not a statement of a payment, and it is meaningless without something in writing to which it is appended which will record the fact of payment. If, then, the fact of payment recorded is not in the handwriting of the person making the payment, the provisions of the section are not satisfied. It is not alleged here, much less proved, that the person making the payment could do nothing more than sign his name. So it is unnecessary to consider the cases which have allowed as a good acknowledgment a mere signature or a mark, where it is proved that the person paying was able to do no more in the way of recording the payment. We set aside the decree of the lower Court and dismiss the suit with costs throughout.