During the course of the trial of O.S.No.195 of 1950 on the file of the District Munsif’s Court of Karur the plaintiffs attempted to adduce in evidence a certified copy of a registered partition-deed entered into on 22nd May, 1886, among various individuals. Before this was done, the plaintiffs had asked defendants 3 and 4 to produce the original partition deed but the same had not been complied with. A registration copy was therefore sought to be let in. Defendants 1 and 2 contended that since the registration copy was not thirty years old it should be proved strictly like the original and the presumption under section 90 of the Indian Evidence Act could not be drawn in this case.

The executants and the attestors of the original partition-deed are dead and it was not possible to prove the same by direct oral evidence. The learned District Munsif relied upon a decision in Venkataratnam v. Sitaramayya1,where a Bench of this Court held that in view of the decision of the Privy Council in Basant Singh v. Brij Raj Satan Singh2, the view expressed in the Full Bench in Subramanya Somayajulu v. Seethayya3, that the presumption under section 90 of the Evidence Act with regard to docu