KHIMAJIT MATOE Vs. SHAM NARAYAN LALL AND ORS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The judgment of the Full Bench was delivered by Peacock, C.J., (the other Judges concurring).--These cases prove most conclusively that the document ought to be admissible for a collateral purpose without being registered. The plaintiff sues the defendant for refusing to register a document which required to be registered, which the defendant had agreed to register, and which the plaintiff says the defendant refused to register. Now in order to prove his case he must prove, first, that there was an agreement to register and then that the defendant refused to register. But, according to the contention of Mr. Gregory, when the plaintiff endeavours to use the document in proof of the defendant's contract to register, the defendant may say you cannot prove that fact by this document because it has not been registered." Now suppose an agreement to register should recite that defendant had on the date of the agreement executed a zuripeshgi lease without specifying what the lands were which were included in it, and without mentioning the amount which was to be secured, and suppose that the plaintiff should sue the defendant upon that agreement for refusal to register. The agreement would prove that there was a zuripeshgi lease, but it would not prove what lands were included in it or what amount was intended to be secured by the zuripeshgi lease. The plaintiff would have to prove the zuripeshgi lease for the purpose of showing what damages he had sustained in consequence of the breach of the defendant's agreement to register. Now if, when in order to prove the amount of damages sustained by the defendant's refusal to register, and not for the purpose of establishing the zuripeshgi, the plaintiff should offer the zuripeshgi deed in evidence, the defendant could successfully object to its admissibility upon the ground that it was not registered, the plaintiff might be without a remedy. If such were the law, the grossest injustice might be perpetrated. It appears to me that putting such a reasonable construction on the law as the Court ought to put, they would not allow the defendant to avail himself of the non-registration of the document for the purpose of protecting himself in a suit against him for a breach of his covenant to register. The decisions of the lower appellate Court in both these cases are affirmed with costs.