The plaintiff, a piecegoods merchant of Coimbatore with an office in Madras, sues the South Indian Railway for the recovery of Rs 6,081-10-0 as the value of three bales of sarees and cloths which were stolen from the Madras Beach Station goods shed.

The admitted facts are these. On the 29th May, 1946, the plaintiff’s clerk Rajagopalan (P.W.1) consigned six bales through a cartman maistry one Pullayya P.W.2 to be booked to Tuticorin. He placed these bales near the weighing machine in the goods shed without any formalities of booking being complied with. The next morning the forwarding note, Exhibit P-1, and the risk notes Exhibits P-2 and P-3 were numbered and entered by the railway gate clerk D.W.1 in the gate book Exhibit D-2 in which the forwarding note Exhibit P-1 was assigned a number 294. In the meantime one of the bales kept in the goods shed was stolen the previous night. Rather a belated complaint was made about this disappearance by Pullayya. Rajagopalan made a complaint (Exhibit P-4) to the Chief Commercial Superintendent with a copy to the Goods Station Master, Sankara-narayana Ayyar (D.W.3) who has since retired, and sent a telegram to the plaintiff in Coimbatore