The main legal point established in the judgment is that the proof of signatures or handwriting alone is insufficient to establish the correctness of the contents of documents, and separate proof of the contents is necessary for admissibility.

JUDGMENT :- (After stating facts and dealing with points not material to this report, his Lordship proceeded). Balkrishna Bhagwan Deshmukh, however, had no personal knowledge of the events that happened on or about July 10, 1940. He had been merely the sub-accountant in the head office of the bank at that time and was duly concerned with the writing of the books of account of the bank. An attempt was, however, made by Mr. Somjee to prove through this witness the various documents consisting of letters and documents executed by Jamhadas in favour of the bank and also the resolutions of the executive committee of the bank and the letters addressed by the bank to Nissim by proving the handwriting in which all the same purported to have been written. The attempt was obviously to prove the handwriting of these various documents without calling in evidence the persons who had written the same or who were acquainted with the contents thereof so that they might not be subjected to cross-examination at the hands of the counsel for the Official Assignee.

2. The witnesses who could have proved those documents and the contents thereof would have been Deshpande the managing director of the bank, Paranjape the secretary of the bank, Jamnadas and Nissim. Mr. Somjee, however, tried his level best to avoid leading the evidence of these witnesses. Nissim was of course not available to him and was really under the control of the Official Assignee. If anybody should have called Nissim into the witness box it was the Official Assignee and the Official Assignee only. Jamnadas was appearing in this case through his counsel and was supporting the plaintiff. It was therefore, open to the plaintiff to call him in support of his case. Deshpande and Paranjape were similarly the employees of the bank which also was supporting the plaintiff and were available for being called as witnesses in order to support the case of the plaintiff.

3. Mr. Somjee, however, tried his level best to avoid calling these witnesses, viz., Deshpande, Paranjape and Jamnadas, into the witness box in order to prove the various facts which were necessary for him to prove during the course of the hearing of this suit. The attempt was, therefore, made to see if the various documents which could be properly proved only through the evidence of Deshpande, Paranjape and Jamnadas could be put in by him by this indirect mode of asking Balkrishna Bhagwan Deshmukh whether he knew the handwriting of the persons who wrote those various documents. Balkrishna Bhagwan Deshmukh was evidently acquainted with the handwriting of Deshpande, Paranjape and Jamnadas. Questions were asked to him in respect of the said various documents which were thus sought to be proved by Mr. Somjee in his examination whether he knew the handwriting of the said respective parties.

4. Mr. Somjee argued that under the provisions of the Indian Evidence Act all facts except the contents of documents could be proved by oral evidence, that so far as the contents of documents are concerned, they could be proved either by primary or secondary evidence, that the primary evidence of the documents meant the documents themselves produced before the Court, and that if the documents were alleged to be signed or to have been written wholly or in part by any person, the signature or the handwriting of so much of the document as was in that persons handwriting need be proved to be in his handwriting. He, therefore, urged that the said various documents which he sought to prove before the Court need only be proved to be in the handwriting of the persons making the same and if he succeeded in doing so by calling the evidence of persons acquainted with the handwriting of the persons who signed or wrote cut the said several documents, he was entitled to put them in and argued that the contents of the said documents were also proved by him.

5. This proposition sounded to me a novel one. I had in fact never heard any such argument before