No document shall be admitted in evidence if it is not properly stamped, and if already not stamped, then stamp duty should be paid with penalty as prescribed by the authority.

As against the docket order passed in I.A.No:428 of 2005 made in O.S.No.137 of 2005 passed by the District Munsif Court, Ootacamund, directing the plaintiff to pay the stamp duty with penalty to receive the unstamped and unregistered document in evidence, this revision has been filed by the revision petitioner/plaintiff.

2. The mortgage deed dated 3. 2001 is a document which has to be compulsorily registered under Section 17 of the Registration Act. Yet, the said deed could be admitted in evidence to establish possession only if the same is properly stamped. In that case it has to be valued as per Article 40 of the Schedule-I of the Stamp Act. If it is calculated on that basis, it should have been stamped with Rs.18,800/= x 11 times of penalty which would comes to Rs.2,06,800/=. Inspite of time given by the learned Trial Judge the plaintiff/revision petitioner has not chosen to pay the stamp duty with penalty, but has preferred this revision.

3. Learned counsel for the revision petitioner pressed into service a decision of the Punjab High Court in AIR 1966 Punjab 293 wherein it has been held that the executant of a document ought not to be subjected tot eh maximum penalty even if the document is found to be under stamped, unless an attempt has been made to evade the payment of the property stamp duty by trying to disguise the true nature of the document by drafting it in misleading terms. But the said decision has arisen out of a four references made under Section 57 of the Indian Stamp Act by the Chief Controlling Revenue Authority, Delhi in the Income-tax proceedings. This decision is on different footing and on different context and therefore has no applicability to the facts of the present case, where the unstamped and unregistered mortgage deed is intended to be marked in evidence.

4. In 1937 II MLJ 805 (Penatapati Nageswara Rao Vs. Moka Narayanamurthi and another) a Division Bench of this Court held that the improperly stamped document could not be used to prove a collateral purpose, namely the acknowledgment of liability on previous notes.

5. In AIR 1946 P.C. 51 (Ram Rattan Vs.Parma Nand) the Privy Council held that the words for any purpose in Section 35 of the Stamp Act, should be given their natural meaning and effect and would include a collateral purpose. Where an unstamped document is admitted in proof of some collateral matter it is certainly admitted in evidence for that purpose which the statute has prohibited. Consequently, an unstamped partition deed cannot be used to corroborate the oral evidence for the purposes of determining even the factum of partition as distinct from its terms.

6. In AIR 1971 SC 1070 (Jupudi V. Pulavarthi) the Honble Supreme Court held that in view of Sections 35 and 36, secondary evidence by way of oral evidence or copy of document insufficiently stamped is not admissible in a suit even though objection to its admissibility cannot be taken under the Evidence Act.

7. In 2001 (1) CTC 112 (AC.Lakshmipathy & Anr. V. A.M.Chakrapani Reddiar and 6 ors, a Division Bench of this Court held that unstamped documents if required to be stamped but not so stamped cannot be looked into for any purpose including collateral purpose.

8. However, in 2005 (4) MLJ 337 (Tmt.Indirani Vs.Seetharaman), which is the latest among the cited decisions, this Court held as follows:-

"14. In Bondar Singh and others Vs. Nihal Singh and others (2004) I L.W. 706 the Apex Court has observed:

"Under the law, a sale deed is required to be properly stamped and registered before it can convey title to the vendee. However, legal position is clear law that a document like the sale deed in the present case, even though not admissible in evidence, can be looked into for collateral purposes."

.15. This observation guided the learned trial judge to admit the documents, in question, in evidence, though they are unstamped. In the case involved in the above decision also, the documents ought to be relied on was