Vijay vs. Union of India & Ors.
Background
In 1988, the plaintiff and defendant entered into an agreement to sell property, and the plaintiff claimed he was put in possession under it. When the defendant later denied the agreement existed, the plaintiff sued for specific performance and sought to prove the agreement using a photocopy (secondary evidence) since the original was not in his possession. A District Judge initially allowed this, but on review reversed course, holding that an unstamped instrument's copy could not be admitted as secondary evidence under Section 35 of the Indian Stamp Act, relying on a Supreme Court precedent (Jupadi Kesava Rao). The Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld that reversal.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court clarified that whether a document needed to be stamped, and is therefore caught by Section 35's bar, depends on the law in force at the time the document was executed, not any later amendment. Since agreements to sell were not chargeable with stamp duty in 1988 (before a 1989 amendment changed that), the document in this case was never subject to the Section 35 bar in the first place. It distinguished Jupadi Kesava Rao because that case involved a document that was chargeable with duty at execution, which made the facts materially different. Consequently, the plaintiff was entitled to lead the photocopy as secondary evidence, with the trial court to independently decide its evidentiary weight and admissibility under the Evidence Act. The Court restored the original 2001 order permitting secondary evidence and allowed the appeal.
Lesson Learnt
Whether an old document needs to be stamped, and whether that can block it (or its copy) from being used as evidence, must be judged by the stamp law as it stood on the date the document was signed, not by rules introduced afterward.