Court's Discretion Under O.VII R.1A(3) CPC Must Be Exercised Carefully, Without Entering Issues To Be Addressed In Trial: Rajasthan HC

Rajasthan High Court affirmed that while exercising discretion under Order VIII Rule 1A(3), CPC, the Court cannot take into account the probative and evidentiary value of the document or even the admissibility or reliability of the same since these are considered and decided at the appropriate stage of civil proceedings.

“Although, it is equally true that if the document, at the first decipher, appears to be a fake document or does not inspire confidence of the Court, leave may be refused by the Court, disallowing to take such document on record, but such discretion must be exercised with all care and circumspection, without entering into the issues, which are required to be gone into during course of trial, including to decide the probative and evidential value of document or admissibility/ reliability of the document in evidence etc.”

Order VIII Rule 1A(3), CPC, provides a second opportunity for the defendant to produce documents which ought to have been produced in the Court along with a written statement, pursuant to obtaining leave of the Court which could be granted or refused by the Court.

The bench of Justice Sudesh Bansal was hearing a petition filed by the defendant in a civil suit for partition and permanent injunction (“petitioner”) filed by the petitioner's brother (respondent) in relation to 3 properties.

It was the case of the petitioner that there was another joint property which not included in the suit by the plaintiff. As per the petitioner, the property was purchased in the name of the plaintiff and was funded by their father and the petitioner. In order to prove this, at the evidence stage of the trial, the petitioner moved an application seeking leave of the court to produce an original passbook and bank statement of the father and himself.

However, the trial court rejected the application and observed that the entries in the passbook bear cutting, overwriting and interpolation, hence was not an authentic and genuine document. Furthermore, the trial court also held that no sufficient reason was given by the petitioner to not produce these documents with the written statement. Hence, a petition was filed challenging the order.

The counsel for the petitioner argued that for deciding the application under Order VIII Rule 1A(3), the court was not obliged to examine the genuineness, evidential value and authenticity of the document, hence by doing so it exceeded its jurisdiction. Secondly, with respect to the delay in filing such documents, it was submitted that the suit was at the initial stage of recording evidence and the delay could be compensated by awarding appropriate costs to the respondent.

Agreeing with the arguments, the Court held that the discretion provided to the court under Order VII Rule 1A(3) needs to be exercised judiciously and not arbitrarily, to advance substantial justice, keeping in mind that the purpose of holding trial of a civil suit was to give opportunity to the parties to produce relevant evidence without delay for the court to arrive at truth.

The Court referred to the Supreme Court case of Sugandhi v P. Rajkumar which held that,

“If the procedural violation does not seriously cause prejudice to the adversary party, courts must lean towards doing substantial justice rather than relying upon procedural and technical violation. We should not forget the fact that litigation is nothing but a journey towards truth which is the foundation of justice and the court is required to take appropriate steps to thrash out the underlying truth in every dispute. Therefore, the court should take a lenient view when an application is made for production of the documents under subrule (3)."

Furthermore, the Court opined that although there are many factors that the court should take into consideration while exercising this discretion, factors like admissibility, reliability and evidential value of the document were not taken into account while granting or refusing to grant the leave.

In the background of this analysis, the Court observed that in the present case, the court got swayed by the cuttings and overwriting on the entries of the passbook and doubting the genuineness and evidential admissibility of the same, rejected the application. However, these considerations could better be examined after taking the passbook and the bank statements on record.

“At the stage of considering application under Order VIII Rule 1A(3) CPC, the trial Court has exceeded its jurisdiction to deny the leave to produce these documents on record by the defendant… documents may not be said to be irrelevant and their authenticity/ genuineness and evidential value are subject to the decision of the trial Court, after analyzing of evidence of parties adduced thereupon.”

Furthermore, the Court also ruled that considering the nature of the suit as well as the relevance of the documents, the delay in producing such documents by the petitioner could be compensated by imposing costs on the defendant because declining to admit these documents would cause great hardship to petitioner that might result in injustice whereas the respondent would not face any such prejudice since he would get full opportunity to cross-examine the defendants on these documents.

Hence, the Court held that “the trial Court has failed to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction in true perspective and in judicious manner as much as declining to grant leave to defendant to produce documents in question,” and accordingly, the petition was allowed setting aside the order of the trial court.

Title: Anil Kumar Purohit v Ashok Kumar Purohit & Ors.

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (Raj) 288

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