An admission obtained under coercion may be unreliable, but the burden is on the defendant to prove that the admission was obtained under coercion. A claim for recovery of money is not barred by limitation if it is filed within the period prescribed by the Limitation Act, even if the claim is based on an admission.

SANJIB BANERJEE, J. : –

The plaintiff alleges that an employee had defalcated substantial sums by making fictitious entries in vouchers presented for payment and seeks judgment on admission on the basis of two undated documents written out by the employee and his father wherein the embezzlement is said to have been acknowledged and a promise made for refund.

2. The plaintiff says that between September, 2000 and December, 2002 the first defendant employee caused seven cheques to be issued by the plaintiff in favour of the defendant no. 6 (whether in the name of Dimensions or Dimensons) without the plaintiff having received any goods or services from the payee. It was only in “the beginning of May 2003” that the plaintiff says that the alleged defalcation was detected in course of reconciliation of accounts. It is alleged that the first defendant caused certain vouchers to be prepared and presented to the accounts department and induced the accounts personnel of the plaintiff to issue cheques on the first defendant’s representation that payments were due from the plaintiff to the sixth defendant on account of goods purchased or services received.

3. At paragraph 15 of the petition it is averred that upon the first defendant being apprised of the discovery of the misappropriation of funds of the plaintiff, the first defendant and his father, the third defendant, “came to the office of the (plaintiff), and admitted their unconditional liability to pay the moneys misappropriated by the (defendant) no. 1 from the till of the (plaintiff).” The copies of the two documents said to have been written out by the first and third defendants are appended to the petition. The plaintiff has also relied on a complaint of May 12, 2003 made to the Park Street Police Station where the first defendant’s written admission is referred to.

4. The plaintiff has attempted to trace the flow of the money corresponding to the seven cheques and the defendants other than the employee have been impleaded as the direct or ultimate recipients of the funds wrongfully caused by the first defendant to be paid out by the plaintiff. Subpoenas were issued to several banks for producing the relevant cheques or copies thereof and the documents tendered by the banks have been open to inspection. The plaintiff has mapped the course of the funds in a chart which has been annexed to a supplementary affidavit filed by it from which the plaintiff seeks to demonstrate that shortly upon each of the seven cheques issued by it having been encashed by the sixth defendant, the money flowed into the accounts of the other defendants or were paid in cash to the other defendants.

5. The first and third defendants accept in their respective affidavits that they had executed the two documents that the plaintiff has relied upon as written admission of the first defendant’s guilt and offer of refund. The son and father, however, claim that such documents were obtained by coercion at the Park Street Police Station and should be altogether disregarded at this stage and the plaintiff should be required to establish first that the admission was voluntarily made by them.

6. The letters of the first and third defendants are in Bengali. The first defendant addressed his undated letter to the managing director of the plaintiff where he says that he made and cleared false bills in the name of the sixth defendant. He gives the particulars of the cheques that have been mentioned in the plaint and details how he used Rs.28.25 lakh out of the total of Rs.33 lakh in acquiring flats at Prasad Nagar and Beliaghata, a Maruti Zen car and making cash payments to his first wife, his alleged second wife, a brother of his second wife and a business partner. The letter proceeds to record the addresses of the second, third, fourth, fifth and ninth defendants. The first defendant thereafter undertakes to sell the Beliaghata and Udaynarayanpur properties, the car and his wife’s movables and promises to m