JUDGMENT :- This is a defendants appeal against the judgment and decree declaring Respondent Nos. 1 and 2 the owners and No. 3 their lessee in respect of the suit property and restraining the appellants from interfering with their possession. The judgment is so brief and laconic that it is difficult to make out the respective pleadings of the parties. As I am remanding the case to the learned lower Court, it is not necessary to set out the pleadings in detail.

2. The dispute relates to a property called Rumod situate at Surla. The registration number of the property is said to be 12.104. Respondents did not raise specific pleadings about their title though in evidence attempt was made to induct material facts about title which were not at all pleaded. Respondents 1 and 2 started with a bland plea that they were the owners and they had leased out the property to Respondent No. 3. 3. Appellants/defendants denied Respondents title and pleaded ownership and possession with them. The main point raised by the appellants was that actually the registration number of the property Rumod was 8523 and not 12104 as pleaded in the plaint. This property was registered in appellants names and Respondents 1 and 2 had fraudulently got the registration number changed. The learned lower Court framed 4 issues and issue No. 2 is as follows:-

"Whether the registration Nos. 12.104 and 8.523 referred to the same property."

4. Appellants/defendants had filed some important documents on this important issue. These documents are certified copies of Public records. They were filed before parties entered upon their evidence. Appellants had prayed that these documents should be considered but the learned lower Court by order dated 23-8-1971 rejected the prayer and refused to look into these documents.

5. The reasons given by the learned lower Court for rejecting the documents are not sound. The learned lower Courts observation that the documents had to be produced by a witness to be exhibited and the opposite party should have been given a chance to cross-examine him is quite irrelevant. The act of marking the documents under O. 13, R. 4. Civil P. C. is the job of the Court and no formal tendering of public document by or through witness is necessary under the Evidence Act or the Code of Civil Procedure. Public documents do not require any proof and they should be admitted without the formality of being tendered by a witness, in view of Section 77 of the Evidence Act.

6. Shri Usgaonkar for the respondents conceded that the documents should have been taken in evidence and considered by the learned lower Court. He did not try to justify the order rejecting admission of these documents. I may note here that appellants/defendants did not make an application under R. 2 of O. 13, Code of Civil Procedure for permission to file these documents after issues had been struck. However, this ground was not taken by the learned lower Court for rejecting the documents and in fact the learned lower Court had conceded that O. 13, Civil P. C. did not prevent him from taking the documents on record. Provisions of Order 13 have been enacted to secure a fair trial of the case and not to penalise parties for not producing documents in time. The main object of R. 2. O. 13 is to prevent parties from manufacturing evidence during the trial. (Hari Ram Goenka v. Lachmi Singh, AIR 1928 Pat 537). This stigma that the documents in question could be manufactured, does not attach to the public documents produced by the appellants/defendants. The learned trial Court should therefore, have admitted and considered them in evidence. Failure of the lower Court to do so vitiates the judgment and renders a remand necessary.

7. I may also add that looking to the nature of the dispute as regards the identity of the suit property allegedly bearing two different registration numbers, the trial Court will be well advised to appoint a Commissioner, preferably a trained surveyor to examine whether the prop

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