A signature matched by eye with 2007 court papers cannot prove a 2004 rent deed: Telangana High Court sets aside eviction

Landlords win eviction cases on one fact before any other: the tenant is their tenant. In Shashi Rekha the landlord's proof of that fact was a ten-rupee stamp-paper agreement from October 2004, which the occupant swore she never signed. The first appellate court settled the question by holding the agreement beside her signatures on papers filed in court and finding that they matched. On 3 November 2026 the Telangana High Court said that was not proof, and put the eviction petition back where the Rent Controller had left it: dismissed.

A tenancy nobody could vouch for

The petition was filed in 2007 under Section 10(2)(i) of the Buildings (Lease, Rent and Eviction) Control Act, 1960 (the judgment calls it the A.P. Act; Telangana continues it). The landlord claimed that Ms. Shashi Rekha had taken the western portion of a second floor in Marredpally, Secunderabad, for eleven months at Rs. 2,400 a month, and had paid nothing for twenty months. Her answer was a different story: the tenant was her mother, at Rs. 600 plus Rs. 300 for maintenance. The mother, she said, had also paid Rs. 3,00,000 under an agreement of sale that the landlord never honoured, and had sued for specific performance in O.S. No. 547 of 2007.

The landlord's evidence was thin for a document on which his whole case rested. He examined himself. One of the three attesting witnesses to the agreement was examined, but the Rent Controller had already eschewed that evidence. The other two were never called. He did not ask for the document to go to a handwriting expert. He said he issued rent receipts, yet produced none. The Rent Controller therefore held execution unproved and dismissed the petition in 2011.

What proving a signature actually requires

The Indian Evidence Act, 1872 gives a party who must prove a signature four different roads, and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 keeps all four under new numbers:

Section 67 IEA (proof of signature and handwriting) is the general rule, now Section 65 BSA; Section 67A on electronic signatures became Section 66, which is why comparison under Section 73 IEA lands at Section 72 BSA. Section 101 IEA (burden of proof) is now Section 104 BSA. The section mapping chapter and the notes on proof of documents cover the rest of the documentary-evidence table.

The first three roads bring evidence into court. Only the fourth is the court's own act, and the statute does not even say it must be done. Section 73 uses "may". That single word explains the modern caution: a power given to a judge to compare is not a rule that comparison is proof.

Why the signature on a vakalat is poor company for a 2004 deed

The appellate court's comparison had three weaknesses, and the High Court named each.

It was by eye, and it was a bare conclusion. The order said the signatures "tallied" with no deviation. It did not say which strokes, which loops, which pressure patterns it had looked at. The High Court quoted Thiruvengadam Pillai v. Navaneethammal, (2008) 4 SCC 530 (a thumb impression case), for the rule that a comparison by the court without an expert is hazardous, and that it cannot be casual or by a mere glance. If a judge is to act on it, there must be an analysis of the characteristics of the admitted specimen and a check whether the same characteristics appear in the disputed one. A finding of "no marked difference" is not a reason.

The specimens were the wrong age. The deed was of October 2004. The vakalat and other papers belonged to proceedings that began in 2007. Signatures drift with age, health, speed and the surface a person is writing on. The High Court relied on the Madras High Court in Kuppathal v. M. Sivaji, where comparison with a document of 2003 against a disputed one of 2000 was treated as unsafe and the party who failed to send contemporaneous material to an expert bore the consequence. The lesson for any comparison is simple: the admitted specimens must come from about the same period as the disputed writing.

The burden did not move, and silence was not a confession

The landlord's second argument was the one students most often get wrong. Burden of proof lies on the party who would lose if no evidence were given (Sections 101 and 102 IEA, now Sections 104 and 105 BSA), and the onus of adducing evidence may shift as the case unfolds. The landlord said that by producing Ex.P2 he had done enough, and it was for her to prove forgery.

The High Court rejected that. A shift of evidential onus happens only after the first party has proved the foundation facts. Where execution itself is denied, the party relying on the document must prove execution first. The denying party does not have to prove forgery until then. The same logic disposed of the appellate court's remark that she "had no explanation" for how her signature came to be on a document the landlord said was fabricated. Her case was that the signature was not hers. Requiring her to account for it assumed the very thing the landlord had to prove.

Section 116 estoppel needs a tenancy first

The landlord's fallback was estoppel. A tenant who took possession from the landlord cannot deny his title during the tenancy: that is Section 116 of the Evidence Act, which the Delhi High Court decision relied on by the landlord (Naseem Ahmed v. Deepak Singh) describes as Section 122 of the BSA. The respondent argued that her reliance on the mother's agreement of sale and the specific performance decree was an attack on his title.

The High Court's answer is the sharpest passage for students of property law. Estoppel stops a tenant from questioning a landlord's title; it does not supply a tenancy where none has been proved. Here the occupant denied from the first day that she was inducted by this landlord, and said her mother held the tenancy. The decree and sale deed were offered to show that she was not his tenant, not to dispute the title from which a tenancy began. Section 116 rests on a relationship that is either admitted or proved, and the Court refused to let it do the proving.

Wilful default is not "denying the tenancy"

The appellate court had gone a step further and found wilful default because the occupant denied the landlord's title. The High Court called this an error of its own. Section 10(2)(i) allows eviction for wilful default in payment of rent, and no other reason would do because it was the only ground pleaded. There was no finding on the rate of rent, the months in default, or the amount due, and no rent receipts or accounts. A person who disputes a tenancy, in a case where the landlord must first prove it, does not become a wilful defaulter by doing so. Our notes on default in rent set out what default and wilfulness require on the statutory timetable: wilful default is deliberate and conscious non-payment, not a contested relationship.

Why the High Court could touch a finding of fact

This is a revision, and the Court began with its limits. Section 22 of the Act lets the High Court examine the appellate authority's records for "legality, regularity or propriety". It is wider than Section 115 CPC but still supervisory, and the Court cited Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. v. Dilbahar Singh, (2014) 9 SCC 78, for the rule that it cannot reappreciate evidence for a different view. It can correct findings that are perverse, based on no evidence, a misreading of evidence, or reached by an error of law.

The Court found errors of approach rather than a mere difference of opinion. The appellate court misplaced the burden. It relied on a casual comparison that the case law warns against. It treated prima facie observations in interim orders on the mother's applications as proof against the petitioner. It assumed the tenancy while deciding whether there was one. Each is a question of law. The notes on revisions under the Telangana Act and the Section 115 CPC chapter explain the standard in more detail.

What the judgment leaves open

• The Court did not say a court may never compare signatures. It said that comparison alone, by a glance, with specimens of a later date, was not enough. A clear case with contemporaneous specimens and a reasoned analysis could still support a finding.
• Whether the tenancy ended when the landlord agreed to sell to the mother was left undecided, as was the outcome of A.S. No. 9 of 2023, whose pendency (no stay, per Atma Ram Properties, (2005) 1 SCC 705) did not hold up the revision.
• The Court noted that the landlord never asked for expert examination. Whether the court should call for an expert on its own motion in such a case is not decided, though the second paragraph of Section 73 (the court may direct a person present to write for comparison) is a power a trial court has.