' This Civil Revision arises from a composite order dated the 9th of January, 1991, of the learned District Judge, Sheikhupura, whereby no less than three miscellaneous applications of the petitioners-defendants were dismissed. Those were respectively, dated the 1st of December, 1990, the 9th of April, 1986 (wrongly quoted as the 9th of April, 1984), and the 7th of September, 1986. The petitioners do not express grievance in regard to dismissal of the applications, dated the 1st of December, 1990, and the 7th of September, 1986, but pressed hard against dismissal of their application dated the 9th of April, 1986, which was made under Order XLI, rule 27, C.P.C., to place a certified copy of a Deputy Settlement Commissioner's order, dated the 9th of December, 1959, by way of additional evidence. The reason they had advanced from making the application so late was that their predecessor Din Mohammad, who had been litigating about this property before the Settlement Authorities, had died in the meantime; and that it was after his demise that the petitioners being his successors-in-interest got a clue about it from the inspection of the record in the office of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner.
2. The application, like the other two, was opposed on the ground that since no such prayer was made before the trial Court, it was not open to the petitioners to fill in the gap or remove lacunae.
3. The learned District Judge in his own evaluation of the circumstances considered that due to long pendency of the suit since 1976, it would be too much to re-open it now when the parties had already concluded their respective evidence. Influenced by this fact, he proceeded to dismiss it.
4. Mian Abdul Latif, Advocate for the petitioners relied upon Iqbal Ahmed, etc. v. Khurshid Ahmad, etc. (1987 SCMR 744) and Muhammad Shafi v. Muhammad Najib, etc. (1985 CLC 1087) in support of his contention that ordinarily a copy of a public record may not be refused, adding that in this case the demise of the original transferee of the house left the petitioners in the lurch and that it was rather with his personal effort in examining the record in the office of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner that he found that by his order dated the 9th of December, 1959, the D.S.C. Had permanently closed the intervening door so that the respondent had no claim to any portion on the other side of it. He argued that the equities of the case were totally ignored by the learned District Judge and that shutting out such an unassailable piece of evidence coming from public record was, indeed, putting too much premium on the abstract application of a rule which in any event could not be construed to perpetrate injustice. The ratio of the above-cited cases was that all rules were intended to advance justice rather than to curb or hinder it.
5. The opposite contention was that the whole idea was to fill in lacunae and that the long delay was a great reason to refuse indulgence to the petitioners who did not show necessary vigilance in procuring evidence at the proper time. Reliance was placed upon The Secretary to the Government of West Pakistan, Communication and Works Department, etc. v. Gulzar Muhammad (PLD 1969 SC 60), Khan Iftikhar Hussain Khan of Mamdot (representated by 6 heirs) v. Messrs Ghulam Nabi Corporation Ltd., Lahore (PLD 19'71 SC 550), Gurbakhsh Singh v. Shankar Das-Sadhu Ram (AIR 1936 Lah. 71), Allah Ditta v. A.F. Ahmad & Co. Etc. (PLD 1952 Lah. 582), Sm. Krishna Subala Bose etc. v.
Dhanapati Dutta, etc. (AIR 1957 Cal. 59), and Jhangimal v. Abdul Aziz Khan (PLD 1971 Kar 147) for the view that unless such an application was first made before the trial Court, it could not have been moved before the lower Appellate Court.
6. It was not denied that the property in question had been the subject of the litigation before the Settlement Authorities, nor was it denied that the predecessor of the petitioners, Din Mohammad, died in the course of trial before the Court of first instance, nor was it claimed that the order of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner sought to be placed on the record was not borne by the public record. The contention that the two cases were not applicable because there, applications for additional evidence were made before the trial Court, did not mean much. The phraseology of Order XLI, rule 27 (1) (b), C.P.C. Itself shows that the Appellate Court has the authority to "allow such evidence or document to be produced". It clearly meant that the Court was not bound tight with the pre-condition of making such an application in the first instance before the trial Court.
Considerable discretion has been permitted to the Appellate Court to allow production of such evidence if, of course, equities of a case warranted it. No authority was cited to substantiate the contention that the Appellate Court was denied such authority in cases where there were no applications made to the trial Court as a first step. The cases of Iqbal Ahmad, etc., and Muhammad Shari referred to above, indeed, went to lay down the rule that copies of public record may, as a matter of course, be allowed; the reason being that there may be no occasion to cook them up by any machination. The rule of vigilance requiring of a party to produce evidence before the trial Court essentially envisages elimination of all chances of fabricating evidence and, therefore, if it is established that a particular document was beyond any such charge, there would be no harm in case the same is allowed to be brought on the record even though late.
7. As a result, the revision petition is accepted. The impugned order is set aside and conversely, the petitioners' application, dated the 9th of April, 1986, is allowed. The petitioners shall be permitted to tender a certified copy of the Deputy Settlement Commissioner's order referred to above before the lower Appellate Court. The respondents shall, of course, have a right of rebuttal. Parties shall appear before the learned District Judge on the 28th instant. He himself shall receive the additional evidence from both the sides and decide the appeal pending before him accordingly.