Ashok Kumar And Ors vs Prakash Chandra Soni

This writ petition has been filed by the petitioners aggrieved against the order dated 16.08.2019 (Annex.8), whereby the applications filed under Order XI, Rule 14 and Order XVI, Rule 6, 7 & 14 CPC, has been rejected.

The respondents filed a suit for specific performance, which was resisted by the petitioner. During cross-examination of the plaintiff, the present application was filed requiring the plaintiff to produce his Returns for the period 2003 to 2006 and that of the defendants for the period 2003 to 2006 alongwith the balance-sheet, computation of total income. It was also prayed that the Bank Manager of the Board of Baroda be summoned alongwith the documents for proving the same.

The application was resisted by the plaintiff and the trial court, after hearing the parties, came to the conclusion that the suit was pending since 2011 and was getting adjournment for a long time for cross-examination of the plaintiff, during which, the prayer for summoning of documents has been made.

No indication has been made in the application as to for what purpose, the documents were being summoned and to what extent they were relevant. In absence thereof, the application came to be rejected.

Learned counsel for the petitioners made submissions that the documents in question were relevant for the purpose of establishing the case of the petitioner in relation to the fact that the documents were executed / prepared by the plaintiff taking advantage of the relations between the parties and therefore, the rejection of the application by the trial court was not justified.

I have considered the submissions made by learned counsel for the petitioners and have perused the material available on record.

A perusal of the application filed by the petitioner would reveal that the petitioners have required the plaintiff to produce his returns and that of the defendant also.

Once, the case is that the Returns were prepared by the plaintiff and they were filed with the Income Tax Authority, nothing prevented the petitioner from getting copies from the department and produce the same before the Court and / or confront the plaintiff with the said documents. However, instead of doing the same the application was filed. During the course of cross-examination, filing of the application based on the statements made, cannot be countenanced.

Further, irrespective of the fact whether the relevance of the documents could have been examined at the said stage or not, the very filing of the application in the manner and the purpose for which the same was sought by the petitioners cannot be approved.

In view thereof, no case for interference is made out in the present writ petition, the same is, therefore, dismissed.