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This is a civil revision petition under Article 227 of the Constitution of India by the respondent-plaintiff assailing the order dated 25.02.2016 of the learned Additional Senior Civil Judge, Kurnool, passed in IA.No.1174 of 2015 in OS.No.324 of 2010 filed by the petitioner-defendant under Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, requesting to send the vakalat and written statement containing his signatures along with the promissory note, exhibit A1, with endorsement thereon, exhibit A2, to a handwriting expert for comparison of the signatures of the defendant on vakalat and written statement on one hand with the signatures said to be of him on exhibits A1 and A2 and furnishing a report with opinion as to the genuineness or otherwise of the disputed signatures on exhibits A1 and A2.

For the reasons aforementioned, we answer the reference thus: No time could be fixed for filing applications under Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act for sending the disputed signature or writings to the handwriting expert for comparison and opinion and same shall be left open to the discretion of the court; for exercising such discretion when exigencies so demand, depending upon the facts and circumstances of the each case.

7. Before proceeding further it is trite to refer to the Full Bench decision of this Court in Bande Siva Shankara Srinivasa Prasad v. Ravi Surya Prakash Babu and others wherein the legal position is settled. In this decision the reference was answered as under by the Full Bench.

"It is essentially within the judicious discretion of the Court, depending on the individual facts and circumstances of the case before it, to seek or not to seek expert opinion as to the comparison of the disputed handwriting/signature with the admitted handwriting/ signature under Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The Court is however not barred from sending the disputed handwriting/ signature for comparison to an expert merely because the time gap between the admitted handwriting/signature and the disputed handwriting/signature is long. The Court must however endeavour to impress upon the petitioning party that comparison of disputed handwritings/signatures with admitted handwritings/signatures, separated by a time lag of 2 to 3 years, would be desirable so as to facilitate expert comparison in accordance with satisfactory standards. That being said, there can be no hard and fast rule about this aspect and it would ultimately be for the expert concerned to voice his conclusion as to whether the disputed handwriting/ signature and the admitted handwriting/signature are capable of comparison for a viable expert opinion. The view expressed by the Division Bench in Janachaitanya Housing Limited v. Divya Financiers [2008 (3) ALT 409 (DB)], as to the stage of the proceedings when an application can be moved by a party under Section 45 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, continues to hold the field and there is no necessity for this Full Bench to address that issue."

8. The defendant who is seeking comparison, by an expert, of his signatures on vakalat and written statement on one hand with the disputed signatures, which are on exhibits A1 and A2 on the other, has not produced into the Court below, along with his petition, any authentic documents like registered sale deeds or any other registered documents containing his signatures of a contemporaneous or any other period. The defendant has not even produced any other [unregistered] documents containing his signatures which are prior in point of time to exhibits A1 and A2. It is not his case that there are no such documents. It is settled law that the science of identifying thumb impressions is an exact science and does not admit any mistake or doubt. Nevertheless, the opinion of an expert in regard to genuineness or otherwise of signatures and/or hand writings is purely opinion evidence and such opinion evidence in regard to signatures and/or handwriting will not be considered as an opinion based on exact science as in the case of thumb impressions. In addition, it is necessary to observe that expert's opinion evidence as to handwriting or signatures can rarely, if ever, take the place of substantive evidence. In the well considered view of this Court, the defendants signatures on the Vakalat and the Written Statement cannot be considered as signatures of comparable and assured standard as according to the plaintiff even by the date of the filing of the vakalat the defendant is clear in his mind about his stand in regard to the denial of his signatures on the suit promissory note and the endorsement thereon and as the contention of the plaintiff that the defendant might have designedly disguised his signatures on the Vakalat and the Written Statement cannot be ruled out prima facie. The view point being projected by the plaintiff that if the defendant is called upon to furnish his signatures in open Court, he might designedly disguise his signatures while making his signatures on papers in open court is also having considerable force and merit. Unless the defendant makes available to the Court below any documents, with his signatures, of authentic and reliable nature more or less of a contemporaneous period, and unless such documents are in turn made available to the expert along with the suit promissory note, the expert will not be in a position to furnish an assured opinion, in the well considered view of this Court. Further, it is not in dispute that the defendant in his cross-examination has denied his signatures on his vakalat filed in the suit and also could not affirm or say for sure as to whether his signature on the affidavit filed in lieu of examination in chief is his signature or not. There is no point in sending to an expert the documents of doubtful nature and character and add one more piece of unreliable evidence and burden the record by wasting the time and money of the parties. When there are no signatures of comparable and assured standard on the material record before the trial Court, it is unsafe to obtain the signatures of the defendant in open Court and send the said signatures and also his vakalat and written statement to an expert for obtaining his opinion after comparison of the signatures thereon with the disputed signatures on the suit promissory note, as any such opinion obtained from a handwriting expert on such material is not going to be of any help to the trial Court in effectively adjudicating the lis more particularly in the light of the admitted legal position that expert's opinion evidence as to handwriting or signatures can rarely, if ever, take the place of substantive evidence.