Pawan Dass vs Akhara Ghamanda Dass @ Beriwala and Another

K. Kannan, J.—The document which was brought at the time of trial was as regards its admissibility. It was objected by the revision petitioner but allowed to be accepted as evidence subject to its admissibility to be argued at the time of judgment. There are two approaches of whether the Court shall pass an order regarding admissibility at the time when the objection is taken or without fettering the course of trial, the Court could reserve the issue of admissibility to be considered at the time of final stage when the judgment was delivered. The court has adopted the latter procedure and reserved the issue of admissibility of the document to be decided at the time of judgment.

Learned counsel has done substantial research on this topic and brings to me that there are decisions either way and a Full Bench of the Bombay High Court in Hemendra Rasiklal Ghia Vs. Subodh Mody, has taken a view that a finding of admissibility shall be taken at the time when an objection is made and cannot be relegated to the stage of passing the judgment. CPC underwent several changes in the year 1999 and 2002 which brought an important amendment in Section 115 to restrict the Court''s power in revision u/s 115 only to the interim orders passed by lower courts, which if it had been decided otherwise, would have gone to conclude the case. If an interim order was passed which did not conclude the case but it was only reserved for a judgment at a later time, then it was not an order which could be subjected to revision u/s 115. This amendment was brought with a salutary object of not causing obstruction in the course of trial. Article 227 suddenly became relevant in a larger way after the amendment of Section 115 and what could not be brought u/s 115 came to be filed under Article 227. The Supreme Court itself has resented this practice in Rajeshwari Vs. Puran Indoria, , and has observed that Article 227 ought not to be understood as granting a new passport to what Section 115 would prohibit. The Court''s power for supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 shall only be to correct illegality or assumption of wrong jurisdiction. Every wrong order is not an order that would allow for intervention under Article 227.

I would apply yet another test to the Court''s intervention under Article 227 of whether any serious prejudice could be caused by the order that was passed. The Court has not shut out the petitioner from raising an objection contending that the document which was exhibited as evidence could not be relied on. It has reserved that order to be passed along with the judgment. The petitioner brings before me the document which was admitted in evidence and points out that the document is a copy of a document filed in Court and according to him, the document would fail to qualify as secondary evidence in terms of Section 62 of the Evidence Act. That objection is always available for him at the time of arguments. The Court shall render an adjudication on the relevance and its admissibility. The only situation when the Court shall be compelled to pass an order regarding admissibility of the document would be when a document is insufficiently stamped and the issue is whether the document should be admitted in evidence or not. This becomes relevant in view of Section 35 of the Indian Stamp Act which bars admissibility in evidence of the document which is insufficiently stamped. The reason why there shall be such compulsion is by the next statutory provision of Section 36 of the Indian Stamp Act which states that if a document which is insufficiently stamped is allowed to be taken on evidence, it shall be incompetent to raise the issue of admissibility at a later point of time. To that extent the Court that admits a document which is insufficiently stamped takes away a right to any party to bring an argument against admissibility at a later stage. The Court itself will be barred from adjudicating on its admissibility at a later point of time. This shall be the only exception when the Court would be required to give a finding regarding the admissibility of the document at that time. I do not find any illegality in the order passed for an interference in revision. The civil revision is dismissed with the above observations.