- (1.) The present writ petition has been preferred by the Petitioners, who are original Defendants in Title Suit No. 25 of 2000, challenging the order passed by the Munsif, Koderma dated 30th Jury, 2010, whereby, the original deed of gift, which was marked for identification as "X" and upon which the Defendants are placing reliance, has been denied to be given Exhibit number, on the ground that the deed of gift requires registration and, therefore, the said document is not given Exhibit number.
(2.) Having heard learned Counsel for both the sides and looking to the facts and circumstances of the case, I hereby quash and set aside the order, passed by the Munsif, Koderma, dated 30th July, 2010 in Title Suit No. 25 of, 2000, mainly for the following facts and reasons: (I) The present Petitioners are the original Defendants in Title Suit No. 25 of 2000 and the present Respondent is the original Plaintiff. It appears that the Defendants are relying upon some deed of gift dated 16th June, 1973. This document is already on record of the trial Court in the aforesaid Title Suit, which was marked for identification as "X". (II) It further appears that this document was already referred by the Defendants' side witness i.e. D.W.7 in his deposition. In fact, there was No. need for the trial Court to pass such a lengthy order, as there was No. application by the original Plaintiff for anything to be done by the trial Court. Looking to the nature of the order, unnecessary the trial Court has gone into the details of the documents and has prejudged the issued that the document, in question, has No. evidentiary value. This observation could have been postponed and could have been reflected in the final decision of Title Suit No. 25 of 2000. (III) This order was not required at all. The evidentiary value of any 2. document, which is given Exhibit number, can be judged the time of final hearing, looking to the totality of the evidence on record, both oral as well as documentary. The trial Court ought to have been kept in mind that even though the document is given Exhibit number, it does not mean that it is a conclusive piece of evidence. It has been held by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of Bipin Shanti Lal Panchal v. State of Gujarat, 2001 3 SCC 1, especially at paragraph Nos. 13 and 14, as under: 13. It is an archaic practice that during the evidence-collecting stage, whenever any objection is raised regarding admissibility of any material in evidence the Court does not proceed further without passing order on such objection. But the fallout of the above practice is that:Suppose the trial Court, in a case, upholds a particular objection and excludes the material from being admitted in evidence and then proceeds with the trial and disposes of the case finally. If the Appellate or the Revisional Court, when the same question is re-canvassed, could take a different view on the admissibility of that material in such cases the Appellate Court would be deprived of the benefit of that evidence, because that was not put on record by the trial Court. In such a situation the higher Court may have to send the case back to the trial Court for recording that evidence and then to dispose of the case afresh. Why should the trial prolong like that unnecessarily on account of practices created by ourselves. Such practices, when realised through the course of long period to be hindrances which impede steady and swift progress of trial proceedings, must be recasted or remoulded to give way for better substitutes which would help acceleration of trial proceedings. 14. When so recast, the practice which can be a better substitute is this: Whenever an objection is raised during evidence-taking stage regarding the admissibility of any material or item of oral evidence the trial Court can make a note of such objection and mark the objected document tentatively as an exhibit in the case (or record the objected part of the oral evidence) subject to such objections to be decided at the last stage in the final judgment. If the Court finds at the final stage that the objection so raised is sustainable the Judge or Magistrate can keep such evidence excluded from consideration. In our view there is No. illegality in adopting such a course. (However, we make it clear that if the objection relates to deficiency of stamp duty of a document the Court has to decide the objection before proceeding further. For all other objections the procedure suggested above can be followed.)
(3.) In view of the aforesaid decision, even though there are objections by the other side, the document ought to have been given Exhibit number and those objections could have been considered by the trial Court in the final decision and the trial Court could have pointed out in the final decision that the so called gift deed presented by the Defendants has got No. evidentiary value. Instead of adopting the aforesaid procedure, as stated by the Hon'ble Supreme Court, unnecessarily a lengthy order has been passed by the trial Court, which has given birth to the present petition.;