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In the presentation form filed with the plaint also the address of the defendants is shown as "B/4 Shri Krishna Vihar, Babulal Pannalal Jain Marg, Road No.22, Belapur Village, Jain Society, Navi Mumbai-400 706".

5 When the plaintiff served the writ of summons, the packet was returned by the postal authorities with the endorsement "intimation and unclaimed" . The plaintiff therefore, filed an affidavit of service of the Bailiff of the Sheriff of Bombay, based on which the Addl. Prothonotary & Senior Master passed an order granting leave to serve the defendants by substitute service. Based on that, the plaintiff published the writ of summons in Free Press Journal and Navshakti on 28.2.2013. The plaintiff also filed an affidavit of service of the clerk of the plaintiff's Advocate. Suit was listed on 1.4.2013 and this Court was pleased to pass an ex-parte decree in favour of the plaintiff on KJ 3 NMS1683.15-19 the ground that the defendants have not entered appearance.

Moreover, the packet that was dispatched by the plaintiff of the Sheriff of Bombay has been returned with the endorsement "intimation and unclaimed" If intimation is posted at the wrong address, can the defendant be stated to be avoiding service ? I KJ 5 NMS1683.15-19 would go a step further that even if the intimation was posted at the right address and the defendant has not claimed the packet from the postal authorities, would it still be a reason to believe that the defendant is keeping out of the way for the purpose of avoiding service or for any other reason summons cannot be served, for the Prothonotary and Senior Master to permit to serve the writ of summons by substituted service. In my view, by dropping the intimation once we cannot conclude that the defendant is keeping out of way for the purpose of avoiding service or writ of summons cannot be served. The plaintiff should make further attempts before the Prothonotary & Senior Master permits him to serve writ of summons by substituted service particularly when it is a Summary suit and within 10 days defendants have to enter appearance. I have been observing that the Prothonotary & Senior Master and Addl.Prothonotary & Senior master has been granting leave to serve by substituted service as a matter of course. They must while granting such a leave, record reason why they feel the defendant was keeping out of the way for avoiding service or why the summons cannot be served in the normal way. There could be various reasons why when intimation is posted, a party may not have collected the packet from postal authorities or the courier for e.g. the party may not be residing at the address where the intimation was dropped like in this case ; (b) The party may be out of town and before they returned, KJ 6 NMS1683.15-19 the time provided to claim would have lapsed ; (c) the party may be too old or unwell to receive the parcel or go and claim. There could be many reasons. Plaintiff cannot just make one attempt and come and ask for leave to serve by substituted service. The onus is on the plaintiff to prove that the defendant was keeping out of the way for the purpose of avoiding service. Leave to serve by substituted service cannot be granted as a matter of course and the Prothonotary & Senior Master should satisfy himself and give reasons why he is permitting service by substituted service.