Evidence required to be produced is accessible to the plaintiff.

R.Jayasimha Babu, J.

The plaintiff is the appellant before us, and her three sisters are defendants in the suit brought by her for partition of the properties of one Chinnasamy Kudumban who passed away in the year 1982. The properties mentioned in several schedules to the plaint were claimed by the plaintiff to be belonging to the joint family of the said Chinnasamy Kudumban, some of them being ancestral. Defendants 1 and 2 in their written statement denied that assertion except as regards items 3 and 4 in A schedule and item 12 in B schedule which stood in the name of the father and claimed that all other properties belonging to them had been acquired by them through their husbands.

2. The plaintiff did not produce any documentary evidence, nor did she set out the manner in which the deceased Kudumban had acquired the properties. The only material before the Court was the deposition of the plaintiff which did not throw any further light regarding the title of the said Kudumban to the properties. The documentary evidence produced by the defendants are in the form of Exs.B.1 to 7. That evidence was supplemented by the deposition of the defendants.

3. The documentary evidence produced by the defendants were revenue records in relation to all those properties which show that items 3 and 4 of A schedule - which are houses - had stood in the name of the mother and father of the plaintiff and defendants 1 to 3, and also showed that item 12 in B schedule which is a land measuring 4.68 acres was shown in the revenue records as being in the ownership of the father. The records produced by the defendants in relation to all other properties did not show the name of either the father or the mother of the plaintiff and defendants 1 to 3. Some of them showed the names of either defendant 1 or defendant 2 or the names of the two together. Records produced in relation to other properties showed the names of persons who are strangers to the family. Some of the revenue records pertain to a period which was anterior to the year in which the father Chinnasamy Kudumban died.

4. The trial Court reasoned that since the defendants had not produced the document of title of the husband, it has to be assumed that all the properties were, in fact, the properties of Chinnasamy Kudumban, the father and therefore the plaintiff was entitled to 1/4th share.

5. On appeal, the learned single Judge has confined the decree only to items 3 and 4 of A schedule and item 12 of B schedule. As in relation to all those properties the documents produced by the defendants showed the name of the father and the document in relation to all other properties produced did not show the name of Chinnasamy Kudumban as the owner.

6. The sole argument advanced by the learned counsel for the appellant is that regardless of the burden of proof, it was incumbent on the party having custody of the best evidence to produce the same before the Court and the defendants not having produced the title deeds in relation to other properties, an adverse inference should be drawn and the Court must proceed to hold that the properties, in fact, belonged to Chinnasamy.

7. Learned counsel in this context invited our attention to the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Gopal Krishnaji Ketkar vs. Mohamed Haji Latif, AIR 1968 SC 1413, wherein in the context of the conduct of the defendant who had the custody of the account books but, failed to produce the same, the apex Court held that it was permissible to draw an adverse inference against him, eventhough he had not been called upon by the plaintiffs to produce those account books, as it was found that those account books were the best evidence and the defendant therein admittedly had custody of the same.

8. In this case, the plaintiff sought a share in the immovable properties, the title to which was a matter of public records maintained in the office of the Sub Registrar who is required to maintain the record of all transactions rela