JUDGMENT

Banerjee and Henderson, JJ. - In this appeal which arises out of a suit brought by the Plaintiff-Appellant for the price of work done by him for the Defendant, the only question raised for determination is whether the Lower Appellate Court was right in holding that a certain letter of acknowledgment called tankha was inadmissible in evidence, as it was not stamped. The suit was brought more than three years after the time the work was done and it would be barred by Article 56 of the second schedule to the Limitation Act unless this acknowledgment can be used as evidence, in which case the suit would, under the provisions of Section 19 of the Limitation Act, be saved from being barred.

2. The Court of Appeal below observes with reference to this letter or tankha: "It is quite clear that this tankha is an acknowledgment of a debt and it was intended to act as one in my opinion and was so understood and taken by the Plaintiff. It is not stamped and so cannot be admitted." The provision of the Stamp Act requiring an acknowledgment to be stamped is Article 1 of Schedule I to Act I of 1879, which governs this case and which says that "Acknowledgment of a debt exceeding twenty rupees in amount or value, written or signed by or on behalf of a debtor in order to supply evidence of such debt in any book (other than a banker's pass-book) or on a separate piece of paper, when such book or paper is left in the creditor's possession," is required to be stamped with the stamp of one anna. The mere fact of a document being an acknowledgment of a debt would not therefore make it liable to a stamp duty. There are other conditions required to be fulfilled, one of which is a very important one and that is that it should be written or signed on behalf of a debtor in order to supply evidence of a debt. The question is whether that was the intention of this document. It has not been found by the Lower Appellate Court that such was the case. The Lower Appellate Court takes it for granted that if it is an acknowledgment of a debt and was intended to be an acknowledgment of a debt, it must be stamped. That view in our opinion is not correct. The letter after setting out the several items of work done requests the tehsildar of the writer to pay the amount to the creditor to whom it is handed. Of course the mere fact of its being addressed not to the creditor will not prevent it from being an acknowledgment u/s 19 of the Limitation Act, as Explanation 1 of that section would show. And it does not necessarily follow that it was intended to supply evidence of the debt. The question of limitation is one of fact and is to be determined by the Lower Appellate Court which has to deal with questions of fact. As the document has never been admitted and has been rejected on the ground mentioned by the Judge in the Lower Appellate Court, which in our opinion is wrong, the judgment of that Court ought to be set aside. We may add that the view we take as to the construction of Article 1 of Schedule I to the same Act is in accordance with that taken by this Court in the case of Binja Ram v. Rajmohun Roy ILR (1831) Cal. 282, in which Sir Richard Garth observed "whether an account thus signed by the Defendant amounts to such an acknowledgment or not depends in each case upon the form and intention of the entry." And in the case of Bishambar Nath v. Nand Kishore ILR (1892) All. 56 the Allahabad High Court also took the samo view, which was adopted likewise by the Bombay High Court in the case of Mulji Lala v. Lingu Makaji ILR (1896) Bom. 201, where Chief Justice Farran in delivering the judgment of the Full Bench observes--

In each case the instrument of acknowledgment must be carefully examined in connection with the surrounding circumstances to ascertain whether it has been signed to supply evidence of a debt.

3. The result is that the decree of the Lower Appellate Court is set aside and the case remanded to that Court in order that it may be disposed of in acco