A municipal corporation has a duty to inspect and maintain public buildings, and is liable for damages if it fails to do so and the building collapses, causing injury or death.

D.Falshaw, J.

1. These are four appeals Nos. 69-D, 70-D, 71-D and 85-D of 1953 filed by the Delhi Municipal Committee against decrees of various amounts for damages passed in favour of the plaintiff respondents.

2. The cases arise out of an incident which happened in the morning of 7-2-1951 when the top portion of the famous Clock Tower which is stood in one of the main business centres of Delhi, Chandni Chowk, suddenly collapsed with the result that a number of persons were killed or injured by the falling debris. The plaintiffs in these suits are relatives of four of the persons who were killed. In appeal No. 69-D/53, the plaintiffs were the widow, a minor son and two minor daughters of Ram Parkash.

In appeal No. 70-D/53 the plaintiff Jagdish Raj is a widower whose wife was killed. In appeal No. 71-D/53 the person killed was the wife of Tek Chand plaintiff and mother of Munshi Lal, Kala Ram, Bhandari Lal and Rani Devi minor plaintiffs. In appeal No. 85-D/53 the plaintiff is a minor son of Gopi Chand who was killed. The first three cases were dealt with by a single judgment and were consolidated to the extent that while the plaintiffs led separate evidence, mainly on the question of damages, the evidence of the defendant was treated as being common. The lower Court awarded damages in a sum of Rs. 25,000.00 to Sobhag Wanti etc., Rs. 15,000.00 to Munshi Lal etc., Rs. 2,000.00 to Jagdish Raj and Rs. 20,000.00 to Kuldip Raj.

3. The two questions involved in the appeals are the quantum of damages in individual cases assuming that the Committee is found liable to pay damages and the question common to all the cases, whether the collapse of the Clock Tower was not due to the negligence of the Municipal authorities. In one of the suits the onus had been placed on the plaintiff to show that the fall of the Tower was due to the negligence of the Committee, but it is obvious that in a case like this when a building has unexpectedly collapsed, and whenever for technical reasons the onus is placed, it becomes the duty of the persons responsible for the maintenance of the building to show that the building was kept in a proper condition, and that its collapse was not due to any negligence, since the persons responsible for the maintenance of the buildings are the only persons who are in a position to reveal the true state of affairs.

4. The evidence led by the Committee consists of the statements of a number of its own officials and the statement of Mr. B. S. Puri, who at the time of the occurrence was Chief Engineer, Central P.W.D. and was called in by the Committee after the collapse to investigate the report.

5. After discussing the evidence of the witnesses for the Municipal Committee the judgment proceeds): For some reason or other when the report submitted by Mr. Puri to the Committee was produced by the defendant during the examination of this witness on 8-6-1953 objection was taken to its admission on account of its late production, and the lower Court excluded it, in my opinion quite wrongly. It is, however, to be presumed that Mr. Puris report was on the lines of his statements.

6. The statement of some witnesses produced by various plaintiffs who claimed to have noticed from the ground level cracks which were visible in the Clock Tower sometime before the collapse is hardly worth discussing, and was rightly ruled out of consideration by the lower Court.

7. The learned counsel for the appellant Committee has seized on the observation of the learned Subordinate Judge in the case of Sobhag Wanti etc. to the effect that the evidence adduced by the defendant leaves no room for doubt that there were no superficial signs in the Tower which might have given warning to the defendant Committee that the Tower was likely to fall and thus enable them to avoid it. It was thus contended that since the defects which led to the collapse of the Tower were latent, the Committee could not be held guilty of negligence. While, however, I have