1971 (1) TMI 2

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..... filed against certain defendants on the foot of five different pronotes. All the five Suits were heard together and were decreed by the trial judge. In respect of two suits the valuation being low the appeals were preferred before the District Judge and in three suits the appeals were filed in the High Court. The High Court dismissed the appeals. It is altogether unnecessary to refer to the points in, controversy between the parties, because the sole question which has been agitated before us relates to the admissibility of certain assessment orders on which reliance has been placed for decision whether the contesting defendants were the partners of firm Surajmal Manilal on whose behalf the pronotes had been executed. The learned subordinat .....

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..... vidence Act, 1872 (1of 1872), no court shall, save as provided in this Act, be entitled to require any public servant to produce before it any such return, accounts, documents or record or any part of any such record, or to give evidence before it in respect thereof. " Under sub-section (2), if a public servant disclosed any particulars contained in a statement, return, etc., mentioned in sub-section (1), he was liable to punishment with imprisonment as well as fine. The prohibition against disclosure was not applicable to the facts and particulars in such cases and circumstances as were set out in sub-section (3). Now , it is quite clear that section 54 created a complete bar to the production by officials and other servants of the i .....

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..... produce that document as evidence in court. It is unnecessary for the purposes of this case to go into the larger question of production of the documents covered by section 54(1) by third parties as it was the son of Manilal, the assessee, who had produced the assessment orders which are in dispute. There is an overwhelming weight of authority in favour of the view that assessment orders could be produced by the assessee or his representative-in-interest : see Emperor v. Osman Chotani, Suraj Narain v. Seth Jhabhu Lal and Buchibai v. Nagpur University. In our opinion, the law laid down by these cases on the admissibility of evidence of assessment orders produced by an assessee or his representative-in-interest is unexceptionable. We may r .....

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