The impounding of a document cannot be made after the court has become functus officio, and the court is not competent to impound the document after the disposal of the suit.

1. The revision-petitioner filed a suit for injunction against respondents 2 and 3. The suit related to the building which was under the occupation of the revision-petitioner as a tenant. At the time of presentation of the plaint, the plaintiff produced a rent-deed. The chief ministerial officer of the Munsiff's court noticed that the rent-deed was not properly stamped and a sum of Rs. 41,217/- was payable as stamp duty and penalty. The learned Munsiff thereafter made an endorsement on the document: "pay stamp duty and penalty." The suit was not pressed and the same was dismissed on 2-7-1984. The plaintiff filed an application for the return of the document. However, the document was not returned and the same was impounded by the learned Munsiff OB 3-8-1984. The application to return the document was dismissed. Plaintiff filed I. A. No. 1943 of 1984 to review the order passed by the court impounding the document.

2. The short question that arises for consideration is whether the order of the learned Munsiff impounding the document on 3-8-1984 was correct. The learned counsel for the revision-petitioner Shri S. Ananthasubramanian contended that the court had become functus officio and had no right to impound the document when the suit was already disposed of. The learned Government Pleader submitted that the document was produced by the plaintiff, therefore under S.33 of the Stamp Act, the Court was justified in impounding the document.

3. The word "impound" is not defined in the Stamp Act. According to the Oxford Dictionary its meaning includes "to take legal or formal possession of" and according to Chamber's Dictionary it means: "to confine as in a pound, to restrain within limits, to take legal possession etc". In the instant case, the document was presented to the court along with the plaint and thereafter the suit was settled. The relevant section, S.33, of the Stamp Act reads as follows:

"33. Examination and impounding of instruments (1) Every person having by law or consent of parties authority to receive evidence, and every person in charge of a public office, except an officer of police, before whom any instrument, chargeable, in his opinion, with duty, is produced or comes in the performance of his functions, shall, if it appears to him that such instrument is not duly stamped, impound the same.

(2) For that purpose every such person shall examine every instrument so chargeable and so produced or coming before him, in order to ascertain whether it is stamped with a stamp of the value and description required by the law in force in India when such instrument was executed or first executed:

Provided that

(a) nothing herein contained shall be deemed to require any Magistrate or judge of a Criminal Court to examine or impound, if he does not think fit so to do, any instrument coming before him in the course of any proceeding other than a proceeding under Chapter XII or Chapter XXXVI of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (5 of 1898);

(b) in the case of a judge of a High Court, the duty of examining and impounding instrument under this section may be delegated to such officer as the Court appoints in this behalf.

(3) For the purposes of this section, in cases of doubt

(a) the State Government may determine what offices shall be deemed to be public offices; and

(b) the State Government may determine who shall be deemed to be persons in charge of public offices".

4. A question of similar nature came up before the Division Bench of Calcutta High Court in Khetra Mohan Saha and others v. Jamini Kanta Dewan and others (A.I.R.1927 Calcutta 472) wherein it was held that if the suit has already been disposed of and decree signed and sealed, S.35 of the Stamp Act was wholly inapplicable. In Paiku Kashinath v. Gaya (A.I.R. (36) 1949 Nagpur 214) His Lordship Justice Hidayatullah, as he then was, held that a court has no jurisdiction to reopen a case to impound a document after the decree is signed and to order the recovery of the s