A person other than an assessee is not entitled to inspect documents characterized as confidential under Section 54(1) of the Income-tax Act or to obtain certified copies thereof under Section 76 of the Evidence Act.

R.K.Choudhary, J.

1. This application in revision is presented by the defendant of mortgage suit No. 12 of 1956 pending in the court of the first Additional Subordinate Judge at Hazaribagh. The plaintiff-opposite party instituted a suit against the petitioner for enforcing a mortgage alleged to have been executed by her in favour of the plaintiff on the 8th of December, 1952. The petitioner put a contest in the suit and pleaded that her husband was a working partner in the cloth shop named Sri Vishnu Bastra Bhandar at Hazaribagh town, the capital of which was to be supplied by the husband, the father-in-law and the husbands brother of the plaintiff and that as a safe-guard and to ensure against loss due to neglect by the petitioners husband the petitioner was made to execute and register a document which she was given to understand, was a security bond. Her further case is that she did not execute the mortgage bond in question knowing it to be a mortgage bond and that no consideration passed thereunder. She also stated that the husband, the father-in-law and the husbands brother of the plaintiff were members of an undivided Hindu Mitakshara family and that there was, thus, no occasion for taking any loan by the petitioner from the plaintiff. In order to establish that the aforesaid relations of the plaintiff were members of a Mitakshara joint family, the petitioner produced certified copies of certain documents of the Income-tax Department relating to the registration of the firm, return of income and balance sheet filed by the husband of the plaintiff and assessment of taxes therein, and made a prayer to the court that the originals of those documents should be called for from the Income-tax Department.

The learned Subordinate Judge rejected the prayer of the petitioner for calling for the originals of those documents and against his order the petitioner filed, Civil Revision No. 944 of 1957 in this Court. In view of the fact, however, that no order had been passed by the learned Subordinate Judge refusing to admit the certified copies of those documents in evidence, the civil revision was withdrawn at the time when it was placed for admission. Thereafter, the petitioner made an application in the court below for taking the above certified copies in evidence. The learned Subordinate Judge rejected the prayer holding that the papers which were sought to be exhibited were neither public documents nor legally obtained certified copies. Being, thus, aggrieved, the petitioner has come up to this Court in revision.

2. Mr. Prem Lal appearing for the petitioner has contended that the papers referred to above are public documents and the decision of the court below on this point is wrong in law. Several authorities have been cited in support of this contention which clearly establish that the above documents are public documents within the meaning of Section 74 of the Indian Evidence Act. I need not refer to those authorities because Mr. Bhabanand Mukherji appearing for the plaintiff-opposite party has conceded that they are public documents.

3. It has then been argued on behalf of the petitioner that the documents in question being public documents, the certified copies thereof were admissible in evidence under Sec. 65 (e) of the Indian Evidence Act. In reply to this argument, Counsel for the opposite party submitted that under Sec. 54 (1) of the Indian Income-tax Act the above documents are inadmissible in evidence and that the certified copies thereof, which were sought to be put in evidence, were not certified copies within the meaning of Section 76 of the Indian Evidence Act and, as such, were not admissible in evidence. The decision of the question at issue is not free from difficulty, and the views of the different High Courts on this point are conflicting.

4. I will, first, take up the point whether the admissibility of the above documents is barred under Sec. 54 of the Income-tax Act. Sub-section (1) of Section 54 sta