In a suit for compulsory registration under Section 77 of the Registration Act, the court is concerned with the genuineness of the document sought to be registered, that is, whether the document is executed by the person by whom it is alleged to be executed and not its validity.

Reuben, J.

1. This is an appeal by the defendants first party against a decision of the Subordinate Judge of Gay a decreeing a suit andec Section 77, Registration Act.

2. The suit was brought for the compulsory registration of a sale-deed purporting to have been executed on 5th August 1943 by the defendants first party in favour of the plaintiffs transferring to them certain milkiat property in village Shamsarnagar, pargana Arwal, thana Daddnagar for a consideration of Re. 64,000. The document recites that out of this amount Rs. 32,000 was received in cash and the balance was left with the purchasers for the redemption of encumbrances on the suit property. The document is said to have been executed at Gaya, but, as the defendants had some business at Jebanabad, and as there was a rush of work in the registration office at Gaya on the day when the document was executed, arrangements were made between the parties that the document would be registered at Aurangabad. within the jurisdiction of which sub-registry office the property lay. When the plaintiffs however, went to Aurangabad for the purpose, the executants did not turn up and the document could not be registered. Then, in proceedings for compulsory registration the defendants first party denied execution alleging that the endorsements of execution appearing on the document were made by them en blank sheets. of paper foe the execution of a sale-deed in favour of some other persons, and that the deed of sale under consideration was fraudulently engrossed upon these papers. Registration being refuged, the present suit was filed with the result aforesaid.

3. The defence is the defence that was taken before the Registrar. It is stated that through one Jaydeo Singh the defendants first party negotiated for the sale of the property to the defendants second party, and that Jaydeo Singh, having obtained the signed blank papers from the defendants first party, fraudulently got the deed in favour of the plaintiffs engrossed thereupon. According to the defendants, at the time when the sale-deed in question is said to have been executed at Gaya, Jogesh Prasad Singh, defendant 1, was actually ill at Patna and was being treated as an out-patient at the Patna General Hospital.

4. The learned Subordinate Judge has diselived the defence version of the facts and has accepted the sale-deed in suit as duly executed.

5. The first point which arises in the case is the effect of the defence set up by the appellants. Our attention has bean drawn to the decision in David Yule V/s. Bam Khslawan, 6 C. W. N. 329, where an admission of an endorsement of execution on blank sheets of paper on which the dead was said to have been subsequently engrossed was taken to be an admission of execution sufficient for the purposes of registration. On behalf of the appellants, we have on the other hand, been referred to Ram Lakhan Singh V/s. Jog Singh, 12 P. L. T. 233; (A. I. R. (18) 1931 Pat. 219) as to the meaning of the term "execution" of a document. It is unnecessary to discuss the plaint at length as it is covered by the decision of a Division Bench of this Court iu Ebadut Ali V/s. Muhammad Fareed, A. I. R. (3) 1916 pat. 206 : (35 I. C. 56) which is directly in point. Their Lord-ships observed:

"In our view, execution consists in signing a document written out and read over and understood, and does not consist of merely signing a name upon a blank sheet of paper. To be executed a document mast be in existence; where there is no document in existence, there cannot be execution ..... Where an executant olewly says that he signed on blank paper and that the document which he had authorised is not the document which he comtemplted, the statement is a denial not an admission, of execution".

Their Lordships distinguished the case of David Yule (ante) which was clearly a case where their Lordships observation as to the sufficiency of material for the registration of the document was merely obiter.

6. The nex