The central legal point established in the judgment is the need to prevent tampering and ensure the safety of documents when sending them to handwriting experts, with the court allowing examination by a Government expert in the presence of a Court official.

ORDER:- This civil revision petition has been filed by the defendants in O. S. 2393 of 1972. The petitioners executed a promissory note in favour of the respondents. There is an endorsement in the promissory note on 10-3-1971, showing payment of Rs. 10/-. This endorsement is impugned as not genuine and therefore the petitioners wanted the document to be sent to a handwriting expert. The learned District Munsif relying on the decision in Ramaswami Konar v. Karuppa Konar, (1971) 84 Mad LW 348 dismissed the application.

2. Subsequently another application was filed for sending the promissory note to Government handwriting expert. This application was also dismissed on 16-2-1974, on the ground that an earlier application had been dismissed and that the subsequent application was only a ruse to avoid trial. Hence this revision petition.

3. The learned counsel for the revision petitioners submitted that the decision relied on by the learned District Munsif would only be applicable if the document is required to be sent to a private expert and if the document is to be examined by the Government handwriting expert, there could be no such bar. He placed before me the relevant decisions.

4. In Narasimha v. Narayana Chettiar, 1968-2 Mad LJ 48, Ramamurti, J. condemned the practice of sending the original documents in the custody of the Court to handwriting experts as being highly objectionable. It was pointed out by him that under no circumstances should a Court permit or allow the documents to go out of its custody, as such an evil practice is attendant with various risks, and that the proper procedure in such cases would be only to permit the handwriting expert to inspect the documents in the Court premises itself in the presence of some responsible officers of the Court and also if necessary to permit the expert to have photographic copies of the documents in the presence of the responsible officer of the Court. Any lapse in taking necessary safeguards in this direction may, in his view, result in miscarriage of justice, besides creating complications. The learned Judge has also deprecated the practice of making belated and repeated applications for examination of documents by handwriting experts in order to protract and delay the trial.

5. This judgment was followed by Ramanujam, J. in Ramasami Konar v. Karuppa Konar, (1971) 84 Mad LW 348, where an application was filed to send the promissory note to the Fingerprint expert at Vellore, the learned Judge held that the proper procedure in such cases would be only to allow the handwriting expert to inspect the documents in the Court premises itself in the presence of some responsible Court official and also, if necessary, to permit the expert to have photographic copies of the same.

6. In Nagarathnammal v. Ramaswami Chettiar, 1973 TN LNJ 241 = (C.R. P. 2137 of 1972)* - the same question came up for consideration before Raghavan, J. The learned Judge had to consider the prayer for sending the document to the State Forensic Science Laboratory for opinion. It was held that there was no harm in sending the original document to Government expert for opinion.

* Reported in (1974) 88 Mad LW 71.

7. The question for consideration is whether the document could be parted with in favour of a fingerprint expert, whether a private or a Government one. The decisions of Ramamurti, J. and Ramanujam, J. which have been referred to are clear on the point that it is unsafe to part with the documents in the course of the trial. The learned Judges did not make any distinction between private and Government experts. It is true that Raghavan, J. has permitted the handing over of the documents to Government expert. I do not know the circumstances under which the learned Judge felt it possible to part with the document in favour of the Government expert. The consideration that weighs in not allowing the document to be handled by any other person is only for the purpose of ensuring the safety of the document or p