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9. Inspite of abundant material, Mr. S.A. Rajan, learned counsel appearing for the appellant, by relying on Sections 45, 67 and 73 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (hereinafter referred to as "the Act"), would contend that the Court below failed to follow the procedure prescribed therein and the course adopted by him cannot be accepted.

"Section 67..Proof of signature and handwriting of person alleged to have signed or written document produced;"

If a document is 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 documents as is alleged to be in that person's handwriting must be proved to be in his handwriting.

(para 10) "10.... A Court is competent to compare the disputed writing of a person with others which are admitted or proved to be his writings. It may not be safe for a Court to record a finding about a person's writing in a certain document merely on the basis of comparison, but a Court can itself compare the writings in order to appreciate properly the other evidence produced before it in that regard. The opinion of a handwriting expert is also relevant in view of Section 45 of the Evidence Act, but that too is not conclusive. It has also been held that the sole evidence of an handwriting expert is not normally sufficient for recording a definite finding about the writing being of a certain person or not. It follows that it is not essential that the handwriting expert must be examined in a case to prove or disprove the disputed writing. It was therefore not right for the learned Judge to consider it unsafe to rely upon the evidence of the complainant in a case like this, i.e., in a case in which no handwriting expert had been examined in support of his statement."

14. With regard to expert's evidence, in S. Gopal Reddy v. State of A.P, , Their Lordships have held thus:- (Para 27) "..., The evidence of an expert is a rather weak type of evidence and the Courts do not generally consider it as offering 'conclusive' proof and, therefore, safe to rely upon the same without seeking independent and reliable corroboration. In Magan Bihari Lal v. State of Punjab, . while dealing with evidence of a handwriting expert, this Court opined (at p.1093):

"We think it would be extremely hazardous to condemn the appellant merely on the strength of opinion evidence of a handwriting expert. It is now well settled that expert opinion must always be received with great caution and perhaps none so with more caution than the opinion of a handwriting expert.

38. As a matter of extreme caution and judicial sobriety, the Court should not normally take upon itself the responsibility of comparing the disputed signature with that of the admitted signature or handwriting and in the event of slightest doubt, leave the matter to the wisdom of experts. But this does not mean that the Court has not the power to compare the disputed signature with the admitted signature as this power is clearly available under Section 73 of the Act."

It is clear that though normally the Court should not take upon itself the responsibility of comparing the disputed signature with that of the admitted signature, undoubtedly the Court is competent to compare the disputed signature with the admitted signature in view of Section 73 of the Act. However, if the Court has any doubt, it is incumbent on it to leave the matter to the opinion of an expert. Though the learned counsel for the appellant has contended that P.W.1 is not familiar with the signature of the 2nd defendant, we have already referred to the categorical assertion made by P.W.1, namely, that defendants 1 to 3 visited their bank and after complying with the formalities, all the 3 including the 2nd defendant put their signatures in the documents in his presence. In such a circumstance, we do not find any error or infirmity in the course adopted by the learned Subordinate Judge; hence the contra argument made by the learned counsel for the appellant is liable to be rejected. Further, the requirement of Section 67 of the Act is only that handwriting of a person must be proved to be his handwriting. In order to prove the identity of the handwriting any mode not firbidden by law can be resorted to. Two modes are indicated bylaw in Section 45 and 47 of the Act. Section 45 permits expert opinion to be regarded as relevant evidence and Section 47 permits opinion of any person acquainted with such handwriting to be regarded as relevant evidence. In this regard, the following conclusion of the Supreme Court in Gulzar Ali v. State of H.P. is relevant. Their Lordships have held that it cannot be said that identity of handwriting of a document can be established only by resorting to one of those two sections namely Sections 45 and 47. They further observed that there can be other modes through which identity of the handwriting can be established. In K.S. Satyanarayana v. V.R. Narayana Rao, the Supreme Court has observed that wherein in a suit for recovery of amount alleged to be paid by plaintiff to the two defendants as a sale consideration of property, the plaintiff claimed that there was a document signed by defendant No.1 in favour of defendant No.2 authorising him to sell the property on his behalf and the defendant No.1 denied his signatures on the document and also on written statement and Vakalatnama, the trial Court could have decreed the suit at the stage of examination of witness instead of going into protracted trial and then dismissing the suit on the ground of absence of privity of contract between defendant No.1 and plaintiff. Trial Court should have immediately probed into the matter. It should have recorded statement of the counsel for the 1st defendant to find it out if Vakalatnama in his favour and written statement were not signed by the 1st defendant whom he represented. It was apparent that the 1st defendant was trying to get out of the situation when confronted with his signatures on the Vakalatnama and the written statement and his having earlier denied his signatures on the document in order to defeat the claim of the plaintiff. After saying so, Their Lordships have observed that falsehood of the claim of the 1st defendant was writ large on the face of it, and the trial court could have also compared the signatures of the 1st defendant as provided in Section 73 of the Act.