RAI BAL KRISHAN Vs. MUSAMMAT RAJESWARI KUAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this case the Appellant and Respondent are the representatives of the original parties to the transaction, but no change of interest or any legal question is raised by their succession to their predecessors, and the case is exactly the same as if the present Plaintiff and Defendant were the original parties themselves.

(2.) THE Plaintiff sued on a bond for a debt of Rs. 20,000, and the nature of that debt is stated on the face of the bond. Rs. 13,000 was an old debt, and Rs. 7000 was stated to be a new debt contracted at the time of the bond; and the bond stated also what the object of the contract for the new debt was. The Defendant alleges that those recitals are false. In effect he alleges that the bond must be taken as of no value, and that the account between the parties must be taken as between an ordinary debtor and creditor. In the first place it is alleged that the object for which the Rs. 7000 is said to be borrowed was not the object, and that the money was not applied to that object. Their Lordships think that is a matter of no importance whatever. It may be that the object stated was not the object. It may be that a week afterwards the recipient of the Rs. 7000 changed his mind and did not apply the money to the object. It does not signify what the object was. To prove that the Rs. 7000 was not actually advanced the Defendant called for the Plaintiff's books of account. Those books of account were produced, and they shewed apparently the whole transaction between the parties, and that the impugned recital was substantially correct. About the old debt for Rs. 13,000 there was no question, and the Rs. 7000, the new advance, was made out in this way: Rs. IOOO was paid for revenue some two or three days before the date assigned to the bond; a sum of Rs. 800 odd due for interest was allowed on account and taken as capital; and the remainder, Rs. 5000 odd, was credited to the Defendant in the books of the Plaintiff to be drawn as occasion required. Then the books of the Plaintiff shewed that the money was drawn out, and if they are to be taken as evidence in favour of the Plaintiff there is a complete answer to the charge of incorrectness made by the Defendant.

(3.) THEN a much smaller matter was put forward, just at the end of Mr. Raikes' argument on behalf of the Appellant. It appears from the Plaintiff's books that a number of sums were received from time to time by him on behalf of the Defendant. The dates of those receipts are given, and it is alleged that they were not carried into account on those dates as against the principal or the current interest, as it may be, of the bond, so as to discharge the Defendant from interest pro tanto from those dates. The principle that they should be so carried into account is a sound one, but their Lordships are exceedingly doubtful whether that principle has been violated, and it certainly is the duty of the Appellant who asks them to modify a decree of the High Court on this point to shew them clearly that it has been violated. Their Lordships find that the Plaintiff's gumashta, who is the battle-horse of the Defendant on this matter, was not asked a question on the subject, and it may have been that if he had been asked questions he might have shewn that in taking the interest account the receipts were credited on the right dates; or he may have given some other explanation of the mode in which the account was made out. That the parties were in habits of very great intimacy is shewn by the gumashta, and it is also shewn that the Defendant's predecessor was a shrewd careful man of business, and it is unlikely that he should not have known how his own account was standing with the Plaintiff. His own books are not produced, so that their Lordships do not know whether he himself would have given any different account of the transactions. Moreover, it does not appear that this point was raised before the High Court, and even if it were raised as late as the appeal to Her Majesty, it is raised in so obscure a way that it requires Mr. Bathes' explanation to understand how it was raised at all.