They sued to redeem a mortgage. Their own deeds were forged.
The court said written admissions can be secondary evidence — but only if the primary evidence isn't fake. Their case collapsed.
Dismissed.
Forged deeds.
Case dismissed.
The court said written admissions can be secondary evidence — but only if the primary evidence isn't fake. Their case collapsed.
They brought two mortgage deeds to court. The judge said both were forged. The trial judge held the deeds up to the light, the paper thin and brittle, and saw what the plaintiffs had not counted on: the documents were not genuine.
The case, Kalliani Amma v. Narayanan, began with a simple hope. The plaintiffs wanted to redeem a mortgage — that is, pay back a loan secured against their property and reclaim the title deeds. To do this, they had to prove the mortgage existed. So they walked into court holding two mortgage deeds, the primary evidence (the original documents that directly prove a fact). The plaintiffs’ lawyer shuffled a stack of letters as he prepared his case, hoping the written words of the defendants would fill the gap left by the forged deeds.
But the trial court looked at those deeds and saw something the plaintiffs hadn't counted on. The deeds were forged. Not suspicious. Not questionable. Forged. The suit was dismissed. The plaintiffs appealed, lost again, and finally reached the Supreme Court.
By then, they had a new argument. Even if the mortgage deeds themselves were fake, they said, the defendants had made "written admissions" — statements in letters or other documents acknowledging the mortgage existed. Those admissions, the plaintiffs argued, could be used as "secondary evidence" (a copy or other indirect proof of a document's contents, allowed when the original is unavailable) under Section 65 of the Indian Evidence Act.
The question that split the court
The Supreme Court had to answer one narrow question. Can a written admission be treated as secondary evidence under Section 65, even though Section 63 — which lists the kinds of secondary evidence — does not mention written admissions?
The plaintiffs’ lawyers pointed to Section 65(b), which allows secondary evidence when the original document is lost or destroyed, or when the party cannot produce it for a reason the court accepts. A written admission, they argued, was essentially a substitute for the original. If the defendants had admitted the mortgage existed in writing, why should the plaintiffs need the original forged deed?
The defendants countered with a simpler argument. Section 63 lists five categories of secondary evidence: certified copies, copies made by mechanical processes, copies made from or compared with the original, oral accounts of a document’s contents given by someone who saw it, and nothing else. Written admissions appear nowhere in that list. If Parliament had meant written admissions to count as secondary evidence, the defendants said, it would have said so.
Why the court said Section 63 is not exhaustive
The Supreme Court rejected the defendants' reading. The bench observed that the description of secondary evidence in Section 63 was not exhaustive — it did not list every possible kind. The five clauses were examples, not a closed set. The courtroom fell silent as the judge read the observation aloud, the weight of the principle settling over the lawyers. The court concluded that Section 63 is not exhaustive of the categories of secondary evidence, a conclusion drawn because "written admissions" fell within the concept of "secondary evidence" though not specifically mentioned in any of the five clauses.
Written admissions, the court held, fell within the concept of secondary evidence even though they were not specifically mentioned. This was a significant move. The court was saying that the Evidence Act’s list was a guide, not a prison. If a piece of evidence served the same function as secondary evidence — proving the contents of a document without producing the original — it could be admitted under Section 65(b).
To support this view, the court turned to its own earlier decision in Bishwambhar Singh v. State of Orissa. In that case, a letter written by a party had admitted the existence and contents of a document called an Ekrarnama. The Supreme Court had held that secondary evidence was strictly admissible under Section 65(b) through that written admission. The court specifically noted that, "Further and strictly speaking the appellant Shri Sibnarayan Singh Mahapatra having in his own letter dated the 19th July 1943 referred to above admitted the existence and contents of the Ekrarnama. Secondary evidence is, strictly speaking admissible under section 65(b) of the Indian Evidence Act." The Kalliani Amma court found this reasoning directly on point. The smell of old paper filled the chamber as the judges passed the case file from hand to hand, the earlier ruling confirming their path.
The court also cited a Bombay High Court case, Damodar v. Jagannath, where written admissions about the contents of an unstamped promissory note had been treated as secondary evidence. The pattern was clear. Courts had been treating written admissions this way for years, even if the statute’s language was silent.
The trap the plaintiffs walked into
But here is where the story turns. The court had just handed the plaintiffs a major legal victory on the question of principle. Written admissions could be secondary evidence. The plaintiffs had won the argument about the law.
They lost the case anyway.
The reason was brutal and simple. The primary evidence — the mortgage deeds themselves — were forged. The plaintiffs had produced fake documents to the court. The court could not ignore that fact. Secondary evidence under Section 65(b) is only admissible when the primary evidence is unavailable for a legitimate reason — lost, destroyed, or in the possession of the opposing party who refuses to produce it. It is not a back door for a party whose own primary evidence is fraudulent.
The court observed that the plaintiffs could not rely on written admissions because the primary evidence they themselves had produced was forged. You cannot use secondary evidence to prove a document you have already admitted is fake. The suit was dismissed. The majority decision in the second appeal was upheld. The plaintiffs’ lawyer packed his brief in silence, the stack of letters now useless.
What this means for every litigant
For practitioners, the takeaway is precise. Written admissions are indeed secondary evidence under Section 65(b), even though Section 63 does not list them. But that door opens only when the primary evidence is genuinely unavailable. If you walk into court holding a forged document, no amount of written admissions from the other side will save you. The court will not let you use secondary evidence to prove a document you have already proven is fake. As the Kalliani Amma court itself observed, the description of secondary evidence given in Section 63 is "not exhaustive."
THE PLAY: Written admissions count as secondary evidence under Section 65(b), but only if your primary evidence is genuine and unavailable — never if your own document is forged.
The plaintiffs left the Supreme Court with a legal principle they could use in another case. Just not this one. Their own deeds had betrayed them before they ever reached the bench. The forged papers, thin and brittle, had sealed their fate.