Indian Kanoon - Search engine for Indian Law

4. On being aggrieved by the order of the trial court, the respondent-landlord filed a writ petition before the High Court. The High Court set aside the order of the trial court and remitted the matter back to decide the question as to whether a photocopy of an improperly stamped original document can be received in secondary evidence. After hearing the parties, the trial court by its order dated 9.8.2005 ordered that the document be impounded, it being insufficiently stamped; the document was sent to the Collector of Stamps for affixing appropriate stamp duty and thereafter for sending the document back to the court. This order was challenged by the respondent in a review petition which was dismissed by the trial court. Thereafter, a writ petition was filed before the High Court. The High Court by its judgment dated 3.5.2006 held that the impugned document which is a photocopy of the agreement, original of which is lost, cannot be admitted in evidence; and that such a document can neither be impounded nor can be accepted in secondary evidence.

settled that the copy of an instrument cannot be validated. That was held in Rajah of Bobbili v. Inuganti China Sitaramasami Garu, 26 Ind App 262, where it was observed :

The provisions of this section (section 35) which allow a document to be admitted in evidence on payment of penalty, have no application when the original document, which was unstamped or was insufficiently stamped, has not been produced; and, accordingly, secondary evidence of its contents cannot be given. To hold otherwise would be to add to the Act a provision which it does not contain. Payment of penalty will not render secondary evidence admissible, for under the stamp law penalty is leviable only on an unstamped or insufficiently stamped document actually produced in Court and that law does not provide for the levy of any penalty on lost documents  .  This Court had an occasion again to consider the scope and ambit of Sections 33(1), 35 and 36 of the Act and Section 63 of the Indian Evidence Act in Jupudi Kesava Rao v. Pulavarthi Venkata Subbarao and others AIR 1971 SC 1070 and held that :-