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4. Harbans Singh was the owner of various stretches of land at Nawanshahr, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur which, upon his death for short, “the trial Court” in the year 1963, devolved upon the plaintiff, her step brothers ­ defendant Nos. 3 to 6 and her step mother in six equal shares.

5. The plaintiff and the defendant Nos. 3 to 6 had cordial relations and the plaintiff used to frequently visit her maternal home.

6. The dispute between the parties pertains to a General Power of Attorney (GPA) purported to have been executed by the plaintiff on 28.06.19903 in favour of defendant No. 1 and consequently sale deeds executed by defendant No. 1 as an attorney of the plaintiff. Sale deeds dated 29.06.1990 and 03.07.1990 purported to have been executed directly by the plaintiff are also disputed by the plaintiff. The case of the plaintiff is that the defendants sought her signatures on blank papers in the year 1990 under the guise of preparation and processing of documents for the purpose of getting the estate left behind by their father mutated in their names. Reposing complete trust in her step brothers, the plaintiff signed the papers and handed it over to the person tasked for that purpose by the step brothers ­ defendant Nos. 3 to 6. Thereafter, the defendant No. 3 visited plaintiff’s matrimonial home at Delhi asking her to come to village for short, “the 1990 GPA” Kalyanpur in June 1990 for getting the said mutation effected. Accordingly, the plaintiff visited the village and stayed there for 3 or 4 days.

26. The plaintiff had pleaded that defendant No. 3 had come to Delhi to call her to village for the purpose of mutation of their father’s estate and accordingly, she had visited the village whereat the defendants obtained her signatures on blank papers on the pretext of preparing documents for mutation. When she learnt about the existence of the 1990 GPA and the sale deed, she verily believed that the said blank papers had been misused. However, upon production of the original GPA by the defendants during trial, she claimed that the said document is not scribed upon the blank signed papers and was instead a product of forgery and that the registration was done by impersonation.

“48. Further, in my opinion, if as per the plaintiff, she gave her signatures on blank papers in the year 1990 for the purposes of sanctioning of mutation of inheritance, then whether she asked from her step brothers about those proceedings afterwards. Plaintiff is an educated lady. She knows the things very well. There is no such thing on the file that after giving her signatures on blank papers as alleged by her, she ever made any effort to ask her step brothers about those mutation proceedings. It does not appeal to reason that plaintiff would remain mum for such long period and would not ask anything about those proceedings from the defendants till as per the contention of the plaintiff, she came to know about the execution of power of attorney in the year 2001 in some family function.

“45. Further, another fact which reveals that plaintiff was having knowledge regarding sanctioning of mutation of inheritance, is that, prior to sanctioning of mutation of inheritance of deceased Harbans Singh, she executed power of attorney along with other defendants dated 08.10.1963 Ex. D19 in favour of Gurdial Singh regarding the management of land and she admitted this thing in her cross­examination that after the death of Harbans Singh, she was taken to Tehsil Office and when she was shown that power of attorney which bears her signatures on different points, she gave evasive reply."