Registered form controls title claims: oral evidence could not recast an absolute sale as a mortgage.
Where a transaction affecting immovable property must be evidenced by a registered instrument, its written form cannot be displaced by oral evidence. Sections 91 and 92 of the Evidence Act do not permit a third party to recast an apparently absolute sale as a mortgage when the alleged mortgage itself required compliance with Section 59 of the Transfer of Property Act. The court distinguished cases where no such statutory formality applied and held that the stranger could not prove that the sale deed was really a mortgage. The attached property was therefore not shown to remain liable as the judgment-debtor's property, and the plaintiff's challenge failed.
Issues: Whether a third party attaching creditor could, against the requirements of the law, prove that an apparently absolute sale was in truth a mortgage and thereby assert that the judgment-debtor retained a right in the property.
Analysis: The written form of a transaction governs where the law requires a contract affecting immovable property to be in writing or registered. Sections 91 and 92 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 do not permit the transaction to be displaced by oral evidence in such a case, and the nature of a mortgage, as a transfer of an interest in immovable property to secure money, brings it within the statutory requirement of a registered instrument under Section 59 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882. The Court distinguished authority allowing a stranger to show the real agreement where the transaction was not governed by such statutory formalities, and held that the same principle could not apply where the alleged mortgage itself required compliance with a prescribed legal form.
Conclusion: The plaintiff could not prove that the sale deed was a mortgage, and the attached property was not shown to remain liable as the judgment-debtor's property. The finding was against the appellant.
Final Conclusion: The second appeal failed and the dismissal of the plaintiff's suit was affirmed, with costs.
Ratio Decidendi: Where the law requires a transaction affecting immovable property to be evidenced by a registered instrument, a third party cannot defeat the written form by adducing oral evidence to recast an absolute sale as a mortgage.
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AI Drafter ✕
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