First defendant is the revision petitioner. He wanted to examine the second defendant as a witness. The trial Court rejected I. A. 401 of 1990 which was filed to direct the second defendant to appear before the Court as a witness.

2. A defendant cannot compel another defendant to appear before the Court as his witness. The practice of citing the opposite party as a witness has been condemned as an unapproved form of evidence. If such a practice is allowed, it would result in cross-examination by his own counsel. To illustrate, if the second defendant is examined by the first defendant's counsel the counsel of the former gets the opportunity to cross-examine his own client. This is an unwholesome practice. Indeed it will be a strange spectacle. Such a practice was condemned by the Privy Council in Kishori Lai v. Chunni Lai (ILR XXXI Allahabad 116). The court observed:

"As to this last matter, it would appear from the judgment of the High Court that in India it is one of the artifices of a weak and somewhat paltry kind of advocacy for each litigant to cause his opponent to be summoned as a witness, with the design that each party shall be forced to produce the opponent so s