ORDER
Kendall, J.
1. This is an application under Section 25, Provincial Small Cause Courts Act. for the revision of an order of the Small Cause’ Judge,
Meerut, dismissing the plaintiff’s suit. The suit was for a sum of Rs. 543-8-0, said to have become due from the defendant on account of an oral loan taken by him from the plaintiff on 3rd May 1928, and the Court after considering the evidence held that the plaintiff had not been able to prove that the money had been advanced. The evidence for “the plaintiff was that of the plaintiff him-self, his “munib” and another person, who is described as an old friend and an occasional visitor. The plaintiff also produced his accounts showing that there had been an entry of the loan, but the defendant’s signature was not taken in the book. On behalf of the defendant only the statement of the defendant himself was made. Mr. Kunzru, in arguing the case’ for the applicant, has pointed out that the Court does not appear to have considered the plaintiff’s accounts or, at any rate, to have allowed them any weight, al-though it has not been suggested in the judgment that they are not regularly kept or that they are not admissible in evidence. He has further pointed out that in the cross-examination of the plaintiff no questions were addressed to him with a view to prove that the accounts were not regularly kept or that the entry about this particular loan ‘had been dishonestly interpolated. It has further been pointed out that the evidence shows that the defendant had dealings with the defendant for a number of years, that he had borrowed money–on occasions large sums of money–from him, and that there is no suggestion of any reason why the plaintiff should suddenly have turned dishonest and brought a false claim against the defendant.
2. On the other hand, it has been point-ed out by Mr. Siddiqi that the accounts have been referred to, and that it must be assumed that the lower Court
considered them and decided that they were not to be relied upon. It is not necessary in the judgment of the Small Cause Court to refer in detail to all the evidence. Moreover although it is shown that the plaintiff had advanced sums to the defendant on previous occasions, yet it is not shown that he had done so without receiving a promissory note or an acknowledgment of some sort, and it is highly improbable, it is argued, that a sum as large as Rs. 400 would be advanced to a person in the position of the defendant (a man employed on a salary of Rs. 30 a month) without some acknowledgment in writing which could en-able the debt to be brought home to him in Court.
3. I have considered the case with some care, because it does not appear to me that it is one in which the arguments addressed to me by Mr. Kunzru would have had great weight in an appeal, and I am by no means sure that I should myself have decided the case in the manner that the learned Judge has decided it. He has worded his judgment in such a way as to suggest that he has not relied upon the ac-counts merely because they did not contain a promise to pay on the part of the defendant; but that was not the point before him. The plaintiff’s case was not that the accounts showed a promise to pay, but that they were accounts kept regularly and in the course of business, and that they form-ed a strong substantiation of the statement of the plaintiff. I have been referred to one or two judgments of this Court in which decisions of Small Cause Courts have been reversed in revision, e.g., in the cases of Turner v.
Jagmohan Singh (1905) 27 All 531, Rebecca ‘Steward v. Debi Prasad A.I.R. 1914 All 153 and Bhairon Prasad v. Amina Begam (1916) 38 All 690. In these cases the High Court did go into the evidence, and did come to a
conclusion different from that of the lower Courts. I have not however been referred to a case in which the High Court has intervened in what is really a pure’ question of fact. The question before the lower Court was whether the money had been advanced to the defendant on the date in question or not; and on a question of that kind, unless it is quite clear that the judgment of the Court below is perverse, I am of opinion that the High cannot interfere on the ground that the decision is not in accordance with law. Indeed to hold otherwise would lead to the result that the High, Court might be flooded with applications in suits tried by the Small Cause Courts in which the Courts have come to decisions on questions which were alleged to be perverse but in which there is merely an arguable case for the applicant. As I cannot hold that the decision is perverse in the pre-sent case, I dismiss the application for revision with costs.
