A document wrongly registered due to an innocent mistake in good faith cannot be given effect as a registered instrument, and proper jurisdiction of the registering authority is essential.

1. The plaintiffs-appellants sued on a mortgage dated 14th December 1928 for Rs. 4000. The property covered by the mortgage is situate at Balaghat, but by a mistake on the part of everybody concerned, including the Sub-Registrar, the document was registered at Baihar, although no portion of the property was situate within the jurisdiction of the Sub-Registrar there. There was no mis-description and there was no fraud nor was there any attempt to mislead. The deed sets out the situation of the property truthfull0y and accurately as follows:

In lien of this amount we have hereby mortgaged without possession with you our houses in mouza Lamta, Talke Mau, Tahsil and District Balaghat.

2. The defendants' case is that the Sub-Registrar at Baihar had no jurisdiction to register the deed and so the registration is wholly invalid, and that is the real question we hare to investigate here. The learned Judge of the lower Court finds that there was fraud, but we agree with counsel for the plaintiffs-appellants that there is no trace of fraud to be found. It was not pleaded and there is no hint of it in the evidence, nor is there any issue about it. The lower Court's finding is this:

The Sub-Registrar who registered the document must have naturally thought that a document presented before him could be registered there, and to this extent the parties practised a fraud on him in the hope that their troubles of going to Balaghat would be avoided in case the Sub-Registrar does not detect his want of jurisdiction to register the document at Baihar.

3. We agree that this is pure conjecture. The learned counsel for the defendan0ts-respondents endeavoured to support this finding by reference to the following statement made by the plaintiffs' counsel:

The executants resided at Baihar and some of them being females, they induced the mortgagees to go over to Baihar, where the bond was scribed and registered as a matter of convenience.

4. He stated that this indicated an improper motive which in the circumstances amounted to fraud. We are unable to read the statement in that light. At the utmost it means that the parties thought the document could be registered at Baihar as well as at some other place, and Baihar being the more convenient, they naturally selected that. This is particularly so when we find that the plaintiffs brought the question of fraud to the notice of the defendants by going out of their way specially to emphasize that there had been no fraud twice in the course of their statements and even then the defendants did not attempt to raise the issue. In the circumstances it is impossible to sustain this finding. What then is the legal position? If a document is wrongly registered because every one concerned, including the Sub-Registrar, has made an innocent mistake in good faith, can it be given effect to as a registered instrument?

5. There are a number of rulings which decide that if fraud is present, then the document cannot be acted upon, but that is because of the general principle of law that fraud vitiates all. It is not peculiar to registered instruments and does not spring out of the Act. Harendra Lal v. Haridasi Debi, 1914 AIR(PC) 67 Venkatarama Rao v. Sobhanadri Appa Rao, 1936 AIR(PC) 91 and Collector of Gorakhpar v. Ram Sundar Mal, 1934 AIR(PC) 157 they happen to deal with registered instruments, they are not relevant here. But Dottie Karan v. Lachmi Prasad Sinha, 1931 AIR(PC) 52 which is also a Privy Council ruling is in point. What their Lordships say there is that registration to be effective must be in accordance with the provisions of the Act and that if it is not, and if the defect is not curable as a defect of procedure under S. 87, then S. 49 applies and the document cannot be used for any of the purposes specitied therein. They point out that S. 87 deals with defects of procedure and state that if the defect is one of jurisdiction as opposed to one of procedure, then it is not curable. To the same effect are Mujib-