The main legal point established in the judgment is that registration obtained by means of fraud is invalid, and no contract contained in the deed can be considered to be validly registered.

Prideaux—It seems tome that this case should be heard-by-a Bench as a difficult question of law is involved and I am not quite in agreement with the decision in Ram Rao v. Vedayya,1923 AIR(Mad) 447. The question is whether a mortgage-deed, invalid because registration was procured by fraud, is not also invalid for all purposes as far as registration is concerned i.e., would the registration extend limitation from three to six years. Forwarded to the Judicial Commissioner.

2. The question which has been referred for the decision of this Bench is this:

Where a mortgage deed has been fraudulently-registered in a wrong district by including land not intended to be mortgaged, is the registration good so far as a personal covenant contained in the deed is concerned?

3. The decision of this question affects the period of limitation for a suit for compensation for the breach of the personal covenant.

4. The question has been considered at length in Ram Rao v. Vedayya,1923 AIR(Mad) 447. The learned Judges who decided that case have answered it in the affirmative. The respondent's counsel adopts the arguments on which they relied, and we have, therefore, to consider whether, in our opinion, those arguments are convincing.

5. In Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi, 1914 AIR(PC) 67, their Lordships of the Privy Council state:

An entry intentionally made use of by the parties for the purpose of obtaining registration in a district, where no part of the property actually charged and intended to be charged in fact existed, WAS a fraud on the registration? law, and no registration obtained by means thereof was valid.

6. In Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan Chowdhury, 1921 AIR(PC) 8 this opinion was quoted with approval. Phillips, J., in Bama Rao v. Vedayya,1923 AIR(Mad) 447, cites and remarks:

The principle which I take to underlie this decision is that no person shall be allowed to take advantage of his own fraud. If that principle be applied to the present case, the object attained by the fraud was the registration of the mortgage-deed as such, for had the document been merely a covenant to repay, the Peddalpur Sub-Registrar would have had jurisdiction under Section 29, Registration Act (Act 16 of 1908); for under that section parties are at liberty to choose their own place of registration. In so far as the document evidenced a mere covenant to repay there was no fraud upon the registration law, and to hold that such registration was invalid would be to extend the principle above mentioned so as to deprive a party of a right which he had not obtained by fraud as well as of the advantage gained by his fraud

7. Devadoss, J., states:

The Registration Act does not prohibit the use of a document as a registered one if the provisions of Section 28 of the Act are contravened. If a document is otherwise properly, registered there can be no objection to the use of it as a registered one.

8. We respectfully state our opinion that the learned Judges of the Madras High Court have not kept in mind the fact that a document can only be registered as a whole. The document presented for registration was of the nature described in Section 17(1)(b), Indian Registration Act. The inclusion of a covenant to repay does not alter this fact. Even if the document recorded two entirely distinct contracts, only one of which created a title of the value of Rs. 100 or upwards in immovable property, the document as a whole would still be one of those mentioned in Section 17(1)(b). Section 28, Registration Act, therefore, refers to such a document. Section 29 of that Act begins:

Every document other than a document referred to in Section 28 and has no application to documents to which Section 28 refers.

9. It follows that the sub-registrar, to whom the document was presented, had no power to register the document. It must be presumed that, but for the false representation that the document related to some property within his jurisdiction, he would have refused to register it.