Paramkit Kaur and Others vs SLG Financial Services Limited and Another

K. Kannan, J.—On a defendant''s application to the plaintiff to produce a document and summon the plaintiff, the Court originally appears to have issued summons, but later when he did not appear, the Court has struck off the evidence. The procedure adopted is strange. The defendant cannot summon a plaintiff as his witness. The Court could not have directed the plaintiff to be summoned as defendant''s witness. If the document in the custody of the plaintiff is not produced, the defendant may use that as a circumstance u/s 65 of the Evidence Act and produce a certified copy of the document to which he wants to place his reliance on. If no copy is available, the non-production of the document could be a matter of an appropriate inference to be drawn. The counsel says that the defendant also wants to examine the plaintiffs brother. He shall be competent to do so. A defence being struck off for a witness not appearing is not appropriate at all. The order is recalled. I dispense with notice to the respondents, for. I am not dealing with the merits of the case and only set a procedure which is wrongly adopted by the court below. The defendant shall have the liberty to examine the witnesses other than the plaintiff himself and for whose presence the Court has already issued summons.

The revision petition is disposed of dispensing with notice to the respondents for the reasons stated above.