Madras High Court
P. SATHASIVAM
Meenakshiammal - Appellant
Versus
Gopalakannan - Respondent
Decided On : 06/25/2004
Pending suit, the plaintiff died. His wife, sons and daughters were brought on record as his legal representatives and shown as plaintiffs 2 to 9 so as to pursue the suit. When the suit was taken up for trial, the impleaded plaintiffs filed a petition for marking of Documents 1 to 16 enclosed along with the said petition on 20-10-2000. The said request was objected to by the first defendant on the ground that those Documents, viz. 1 to 16 were secured subsequent to the filing of the suit and cannot have any bearing on the suit claim.
2. It is seen that P.W. 1 was examined on the side of the plaintiffs on 13-10-2000 and on that day, Exs. A. 1 to A.7 were marked and the matter was adjourned to 20-10-2000 for continuation. On the next hearing day, when the documents, viz. patta and kist receipts were sought to be marked, the same was objected to by the defendants. The learned District Munsif, accepting the objection raised by the defendants, after holding that the documents sought to be marked were obtained later and relate to the period subsequent to the filing of the suit, refused to grant permission to mark the same on the side of the plaintiffs, which necessitated the plaintiffs to approach this Court by way of the present revision.
3. Learned counsel appearing for the petitioners would submit that A.K. Subramania Mudaliar, the person who filed the said suit at the first instance (since deceased), himself has produced various documents including the partition deed, kist receipts, chitta extract and adangal extract, along with the plaint. Learned counsel claims that consequent to the death of the plaintiff, plaintiffs 2 to 9 were brought on record as his legal representatives and the patta which stood in the name of A.K. Subramania Mudaliar was got changed in their favour and they are paying the kist for the subsequent years. According to the learned counsel, those documents are relevant and are required in order to establish the suit claim.
4. No doubt, learned counsel for the contesting respondent, viz. the first respondent, would submit that in view of the fact that the documents sought to be marked were obtained subsequent to the filing of the suit and since the said documents have nothing to do with the claim made in the suit, the learned trial Judge is right in rejecting the claim of the petitioners.
5. It will be useful to refer to Order XIII, Rule 3 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which reads as under :-
"3. Rejection of irrelevant or inadmissible documents. - The Court may at any stage of the suit reject any document which it considers irrelevant or otherwise inadmissible, recording the grounds of such rejection."
As per the said provision, there is no dispute that it would be open to the Court, at any stage of the suit, to reject any document if it considers it irrelevant or inadmissible, by recording reasons for such rejection. In the present case, I have already referred to the fact that when the original plaintiff A.K. Subramania Mudaliar filed the suit seeking a declaration and permanent injunction, he also filed certain documents, viz. the partition deed, kist receipts, chitta and adangal extracts, along with the plaint. It is also not in dispute that pending the suit, the said plaintiff died and the petitioners herein were brought on record by an order of the Court as his legal representatives. It is the claim of the petitioners that after the death of the said A.K. Subramania Mudaliar, on application, they got the patta changed in their favour from the authority concerned and they had also p
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