The Supreme Court has held that courts cannot routinely send disputed signatures or writing to handwriting experts and must compare them themselves under Section 72 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, seeking expert opinion only where there is genuine doubt.
The Jharkhand High Court has quashed a notice by the Bihar State Financial Corporation directing tenants of an auctioned property to vacate merely because the premises had been sold. The Court held that the sale of a property is not a ground to evict a tenant, that eviction can proceed only on the grounds specified in the Jharkhand rent-control law, and that the corporation, having taken possession, steps into the landlord’s shoes, with the tenants liable to pay it rent until the property is transferred onward.
The Patna High Court has dismissed a civil revision and affirmed the eviction of a couple from three rooms let to them by the wife’s sister on the ground of the landlady’s bona fide personal necessity. The Court held that in an eviction proceeding the court decides only whether a landlord-tenant relationship exists, not the question of title, which must be agitated in a separate suit; that a tenancy may be established by oral evidence; and that its revisional jurisdiction does not extend to reappreciating concurrent findings.
