The essential conditions of a valid attestation under Section 3 of T. P. Act require two or more witnesses to see the executant sign the instrument or receive a personal acknowledgement of the signature.

Sanjay Karol, J .

The present appeal was admitted on the following

substantial question of law:-

“3. Whether the Sub Registrar who registered the sale deed can be treated as one of the attesting witness that he registered the document after satisfying about the execution of the document?”

2. The Court below has come to the conclusion that the sale deed in question (Ext.DW-2/A) was not proved in accordance with law as no attesting witness or scribe to the same was examined by the parties basing its claim thereupon. Plaintiff, an illiterate lady, hailing from a village, assailed the alleged sale deed on the ground that her close relative, by advantage of her economic and social condition got the same executed by exercising fraud.

3. It is not in dispute that except for the Registrar, who registered the document in question, no attesting witness or the scribe was examined by the parties. Substantial question of law, as framed in the present appeal, in fact already stands settled by the Apex Court in M. L. Abdul Jabbar Sahib vs. H. Venkata Sastri and Sons AIR 1969 SC 1147, wherein it has been held as under:-

“The word “attested”, occurs in Sec. 3, T. P. Act, as part of the definition itself. To attest is to bear witness to a fact. The essential conditions of a valid attestation under Section 3 of T. P. Act are: (I) two or more witnesses have seen the executant sign the instrument or have received from him a personal acknowledgement of his signature; (2) with a view to attest or to bear witness to this fact each of them has signed the instrument in the presence of the executant. It is essential that the witness should have put his signature animo attestandi, that is, for the purpose of attesting that he has seen the executant sign or has received from him a personal acknowledgement of his signature. If a person puts his signature on the document for some other purpose, e.g. to certify that he is a scribe or an identifier or a registering officer, he is not an attesting witness.”

4. Consequently, in my considered view, no question of law much less substantial question of law arises for consideration in the present appeal and the same is accordingly dismissed.