Harries, C.J.This is a defendants appeal from a decree of the learned Third Subordinate Judge of Gaya decreeing the plaintiffs claim in a mortgage suit. On 9th July 1921 the mortgage in suit was executed by defendants 1 and 2 in favour of Deoki Singh, the deceased father of plaintiffs 1 to 3 and grandfather of plaintiff 4. The mortgage was for a sum of Rs. 10,000 carrying interest at the rate of 13 annas 3 pies per cent, per mensem with annual rests. The claim was for Rs. 34,268-13-6. A mortgage decree was passed by the learned Subordinate Judge for Rs. 39,261-0-11 with future interest at six per cent, per annum till realization. The properties mortgaged consisted of a 16 annas share in a village called Bara Keyam Earidpore and 16 annas share in village Daniala covered by touzi No. 287 and situate in the District of Gaya together with 5 kathas of land in village Mera within the Mahal Akbarpore Bhadwa covered by touzi No. 4593 and situate in the District of Patna.

2. The mortgage bond was registered in the District of Patna.

The defendants took a number of pleas in their written statement but for the purposes of this appeal it is only necessary to refer to one of them. They pleaded inter alia that the mortgage bond could not be enforced by reason of the fact that it had not been validly registered. According to the defendants the only properties mortgaged effectually were the villages of Bara Keyam Earidpore and Daniala. Both these villages were situate in the Gaya District and therefore the Sub-Registrar at Patna had no jurisdiction to register the mortgage.

3. It was alleged by the defendants that the 5 kathas of land in village Mera situate in Patna District were never intended to form part of the mortgage security and that that parcel of land was only inserted in the mortgage deed as a device to defraud the registration laws.

The learned Subordinate Judge found all the issues except the one as to registration in favour of the plaintiffs. He however accepted the defendants contention that the 5 kathas of land in village Mera in the Patna District were never intended to form part of the security and that the insertion of the same was a device to defeat the registration law.

4. The Subordinate Judge however came to the conclusion that the defendants were themselves parties to this fraud and therefore they could not set up their own fraud to avoid the effect of the mortgage bond which they had executed. The result of his findings was that he passed a decree as indicated previously. The appellants argument has been confined in the main to the question of registration. No point has been taken on any other of the issues which the learned Subordinate Judge decided against the defendants.

On this question of registration the defendants case was that the 5 kathas of land in Mera in the Patna District had been inserted to defraud the registration law. According to the defendants they were in urgent need of money. Defendant 1 had to meet the expenses of a criminal case which had been instituted against him, and he had instructed a well-known lawyer in this district, namely Mr. Hasan Imam, who required his fees in advance.

5. It was estimated that Rs. 10,000 would be required for the expenses of the defence in this criminal case and accordingly the defendants approached Deoki Singh for a loan of that amount. Deoki Singh agreed to lend the money and it is said that he was quite satisfied with 16 annas share in the two-villages in the Gaya District. It appears that he already held a usufructuary mortgage of these two villages, but the interest of the mortgagor in the villages far exceeded the value of Rs. 10,000. As these two villages were situate in the Gaya District-registration would have to be effected either at Gaya or Jehanabad; but according to the defence, there was no time to go to either Gaya or Jehanabad as the presence of defendant 1 at Patna was essential to instruct his counsel, Mr. Hasan Imam.

6. An attempt was made to obtain the money before the deed was registered, but Deoki Singh would not agree to this. Oh behalf of the defendants it is said that owing to this urgency Deoki Singh agreed that 5 kathaa of land in Mera in the Patna District should be inserted in the mortgage in order to enable the deed to be registered dn the Patna District and thus avoid the delay in going to Gaya or Jehanabad. It is to be observed that the 5 kathas of land in village Mera are nob defined in any way. No boundaries are given and there is nothing in the deed to suggest what kind of land in Mera was mortgaged. Mortgaging a mere 5 kathas of land without any description whatsoever would give the mortgagee no security of any kind.

7. It would be impossible to bring such land to sale because it could not be identified.

On behalf of the plaintiffs however, it was alleged that the 5 kathas of land in village Mera were intended to form part of the security. It is said that one Bedman Missir negotiated the loan and that he ipersuaded Deoki Singh to insist that some property in village Mera should be included. It was alleged that Bedman Missir who lived in Mera had acquired under a deed of gift some land in a village called Puran from his mother-in-law and Bedman Missir persuaded Deoki Singh to obtain a mortgage of some property in Mera so that Bedman Missir could exchange his property in Puran for property in Mera in the event of Deoki Singh enforcing his mortgage and obtaining possession of the Mera property by purchase in execution of his decree.

8. The learned Subordinate Judge declined to accept the plaintiffs version of this transaction. It is dear that the explanation given by the plaintiffs of the part played by Bedman Missir in this transaction cannot possibly be true, as Bedman Missir did not obtain any property in Puran by deed of gift until 20th May 1922, whereas the mortgage in suit was dated 9th July 1921. Further, it would be extremely difficult to accept the plaintiffs version that the land in village Mera was intended to form part of the security. As I have stated, the land is not described in any way and could not effectively be brought to sale in execution of a mortgage decree. Ghandradip Narain (P.W. 2) admitted that he was aware that a full description of property should be given in deeds, and he admitted that when his father saw the draft mortgage bond he did not require the boundaries of the 5 kathas of land to be mentioned.

9. Neither did they require defendant 1 to mention in the kobala the khasra number of the land at Mera nor whether the land was raiyati foakasht or sikan or waste or cultivated land. From the evidence adduced on behalf of the plaintiffs, it is clear that the land at Mera was never inspected and Deoki Singh appears to have known little or nothing about this village. Yet 5 kathas of land in this village is stated to be part of the security.

On behalf of the defendants a number of witnesses were called who stated that the 5 kathas of land in Mera in the Patna District were mentioned in the mortgage deed merely for the purposes of registration. According to these witnesses, it was never the intention of either of the parties to the mortgage deed that this 5 kathas of land should be effectually mortgaged and form part of the mortgage security.

10. Sir Manmatha Nath Mukerji who has appeared on behalf of the plaintiff-respondents has challenged the finding of fact of the learned Subordinate Judge and has asked the Court to accept the evidence of Baktoo Singh (P.W. 5). This witness supported the defendants story that there was great urgency in the matter. At page 31 in the supplemental paper-book he stated:

He (Deoki Singh) said that he would pay the money after the bond was registered. Ramnandan then said that as the counsel wanted Ramnandan the next morning there was no time for registration of the deed and so he would execute the bond and get it attested by any pleader if Deoki Singh so chose and on that Deoki Singh should advance the loan. But Deoki Singh said that he would not pay the money before the registration of the bond. Ramnandan then said that he could not go to Jehanabad to register the deed as his counsel wanted him the following morning with the papers. To that Deoki Singh said that there was no necessity to go to Jehanabad to register the bond and that the bond could be registered at Patna if 2 to 4 kathas of land situate at Patna was given as security in the mortgage bond. Ramnandan agreed to this proposal, Ramnandan then asked Lalli Lal to say what 2 to 4 kathas of land in the district of Patna should be mortgaged by the bond and Lalli Lal said that 2 to 4 kathas of village Mera should be given as mortgage. Deoki Singh and Ramnandan agreed to the same.

It is true that this witness says that 2 to 4 kathas of land were agreed to be given in mortgage but it is clear that no attempt was made to identify this land and that the 2 to 4 kathas of land were only to be inserted in the mortgage to enable it to be registered at Patna.

11. The other witnesses make it clear that the 5 kathas mentioned in the mortgage deed were never intended to form part of the security, and in my view that is the true effect of Baktoo Singhs evidence. The very fact that no attempt whatsoever was made by either of the parties to identify the land; though the plaintiffs well knew that such was essential, establishes to my mind beyond all doubt that 5 kathas of land in Mera in the Patna district were only mentioned in the mortgage deed to enable the document to be registered in Patna. The nature of the property and the urgency support the defendants contention, and in my view the learned Subordinate Judge was right in holding that the 5 kathas mentioned in the deed were never intended to form part of the mortgage security. It has been urged by Sir Manmatha Nath Mukerji on behalf of the respondents that as the 5 kathas of land exists it must be regarded as having been mortgaged, and that being so the deed Gould validly be registered in the Patna District. Section 28, Registration Act, 1908, deals with the place for registering documents relating to land. The Section is in these terms:

Save as in this part otherwise provided, every document mentioned in Section 17, Sub-section (1), Clauses (a), (b), (c) and (d), and Section 18, Clauses (a), (b) and (c), shall be presented for registration in the office of a Sub-Registrar within whose sub-District the whole or some portion of the property to which such document relates is situate.

12. A mortgage bond for Rs. 10,000 requires registration, and by the terms of Section 28 it can be registered in the office of a Sub-Registrar within whose sub-District the whole or some portion of the property to which the mortgage relates is situate. The question to be decided in this case is whether this mortgage related to or included any property in the sub-district of the Sub-Registrar who registered it. If the document relates to no such property, then the mortgage bond has not been validly registered. This Section has been considered by their Lordships of the Privy Council in a number of cases. The first case was Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi AIR (1914) PC 67. In that case the plaintiffs (appellants) claim was based on a mortgage decree passed in a suit brought in the High Court at Calcutta on its original side to enforce a mortgage executed in the plaintiffs favour. The defendants (respondents) were the mortgagor (who did not appear) and two other persons who disputed the mortgagees title.

13. These defendants (who had not been parties to the suit on the mortgage) alleged that the mortgage deed had not been legally registered, because no portion of the property mortgaged was situated in Calcutta where the deed had been registered and the decree had therefore been made by a Court which had no jurisdiction to entertain a suit on the mortgage, and the plaintiff had no title to maintain the suit.

The only portion of the property in the mortgage deed alleged in the suit on the mortgage to be situate in Calcutta, was parcel No. 28 in the schedule, and was described as "25 Guru Das Street;" but the property so described was found to be nonexistent, the wrong description being said to be due to a mistake though no evidence of it was given. The Court directed an amendment, and the description was altered to "25 Ashutosh Dey Lane" which was in Calcutta, and was comprised within the same boundaries as those given in parcel No. 28 of the schedule to the mortgage deed.

14. In the present suit no evidence was given either by the mortgagor or the mortgagee to show that there had been any mistake in the description of the property, but it was proved by the defendants that the property contained within the boundaries given in parcel No. 28 was property which did not belong and never had belonged to the mortgagor. Both the Courts below, like the High Court in the suit on the mortgage, found without any evidence that there had been a mistake in the entry of parcel No. 28 and held that part of the property being in Calcutta the deed had been properly registered there, and that the decree in the mortgage suit had been rightly made and with jurisdiction.

It was held by their Lordships of the Privy Council, reversing the decision of the High Court, that it was open to the defendants (not having been parties to the mortgage suit) to contest the validity of the decree, and for the same reason the direction of the High Court that the entry in the schedule should be amended did not affect them, and that under the circumstances of the case the onus was on the plaintiff to show that the entry in that parcel was not a fictitious entry, which onus he had not discharged.

15. Further, their Lordships held on the conduct of the parties and the evidence in the case, that that parcel was in fact a fictitious entry and represented no property that the mortgagor possessed or intended to mortgage, or that the mortgagee intended to form part of his security. Such an entry intentionally made use of by the parties for the purpose of obtaining registration in a district where no part of the property actually charged and intended to be charged in fact existed, was a fraud on the registration law and no registration obtained by means thereof was valid. No such fictitious item inserted to give a colourable appearance to the deed relating to property in Calcutta when in reality such was not the case, could bring the deed within the limited jurisdiction of the Court. The High Court therefore had no jurisdiction to make the decree; and the deed not having been registered in accordance with the Registration Act (3 of 1877); the mortgagee had no title to maintain the suit.

16. It will be noted in this case that the property inserted in the deed was a fictitious property which did not belong to the mortgagor. The mortgage deed, therefore, did not relate to any property in Calcutta and could not be registered there so as to give the High Court of Calcutta jurisdiction in the matter.

This case was followed in Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan AIR (1921) PC 8. In that case a mortgage bond for Rs. 8000 which purported to mortgage a 7 anna share in a village in the Darbhanga District and 1 kauri share in the Muzaffarpur District was registered only in the Muzaffarpur District. The mortgagor had purchased the 1 kauri share shortly before the execution of the mortgage and in order that he might register in Muzaffarpur. He paid Rs. 50 for the 1 kauri share, but there was no registered instrument or delivery of possession as required by Section 54, T.P. Act, 1882.

17. Their Lordships found that none of the parties intended that the 1 kauri share should vest in the mortgagor, or pass under the mortgage and subsequently, held that the mortgage was invalid u/s 54, T.P. Act, under which a mortgage for over Rs. 100 can be made only by a registered instrument. In this case the property inserted in the mortgage actually existed, though the mortgagors title to it was defective. It was not fictitious property in the sense that it did not exist, but as the property had not vested in the mortgagor and was never intended to pass under the mortgage it was held that the document did not relate to any property situate in the Muzaffarpur District, and therefore the mortgage could not be validly registered in that district.

18. The matter was again considered by their Lordships of the Privy Council in AIR 1934 157 (Privy Council) . In that case a sale deed comprised four villages within the D sub-district for registration purposes and Also a one-third share in a garden, room within the G sub-district. The deed gave the purchasers no access to the garden-room, and one of the purchasers admitted that it was of no value to them. The deed was registered in the G sub-district.

19. It was held that the deed was not validly registered under the Registration Act, 1908, Section 28, as the evidence showed that the parties did not intend that the share in the garden-room should really be sold, its inclusion in the deed being a mere device to evade the Act. It was further held that the word "fictitious" used in Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi AIR (1914) PC 67, is not confined to non-existing property; it is satisfied if the deed does not relate to a specified property for any effective purpose of enjoyment or use. At p. 495 Lord Blanesburgh, who delivered the judgment of the Board, observed as follows:

In reaching that conclusion however they failed to refer to or take into account all the circumstances which their Lordships have detailed, and it becomes the duty of the Board to consider the question afresh in their light.

They have done so and, having regard specially although not exclusively, to the facts that this, undivided share in this sitting room was agreed by one of the purchasers to be of no value, that both in respect of the interest taken in it and in respect of its complete inaccessibility it was incapable either of being utilized or enjoyed by the purchaser, that the vendor refused to include in the sale any subject in Gorakhpur to which these disadvantages did not attach, they think that one of two inferences alone is possible : either that it was never intended by either party that the sitting room should for any purpose other than that of registration be subject of sale at all, or that the vendor only included it because he knew that it never could become an effective subject of enjoyment or occupation by the purchasers. The word fictitious used in Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi AIR (1914) PC 67 is not confined to non-existing properties. It is satisfied if the deed does not relate to the specified property for any effective purpose of enjoyment or use.

20. The last case decided by their Lordships of the Privy Council is the case in Venkata Kama Rao v. Sobhanadri Appa Rao AIR (1986) P C 91. In that case in a sale of land situated in one registration district there was included a yard of land situated in another registration district in which the purchaser neither resided nor owned property. There was no explanation of the use to which he could put it. The title of the vendor to it was doubtful, the purchaser made no attempt to take possession of it and it was built over by the owner of adjacent property. In those circumstances, their Lordships held that there was no intention to convey the square yard of land and the registration of the sale deed in the district in which the yard of land was situated was a device to evade the law of registration. There was therefore no effective registration and the deed was invalid.

21. In my view these cases lay down that there is no effective registration unless the deed of mortgage or sale relates to land situate in the sub-district in which the deed is registered. It is not sufficient that the land mentioned in the sale or the mortgage deed exists. The document cannot be said to relate to land in a registration district unless it was the intention of the parties that such land, even if it exists, should in a sale deed be transferred or in a mortgage deed form part of the security. In the present case 5 kathas of land certainly exist in village Mera; but the insertion of these 5 kathas in the mortgage deed gave the mortgagee no security whatsoever. The land being undefined could not effectually form part of the security, and on the evidence it is clear that it was never intended to form part of such security. It follows therefore that if the defendants can raise this question the registration of this mortgage deed must be held to be invalid.

The learned Subordinate Judge, as I have already stated, came to the conclusion that as the defendants were a party to this fraud on the registration law, they could not now allege that the document had not been validly registered.

22. The learned Judge relied upon the case in Venkataswami v. Venkata Subbayya AIR (1932) Mad 811 in which it was held that a vendor of immovable property cannot be allowed to plead or to take advantage of the invalidity of the registration of his sale deed on the ground that by the inclusion of a particular item of property in the document and getting the document so registered in an office where otherwise it could not have been registered a fraud on the registration law was committed, in which he participated. Their Lordships laid down that as a general rule a plaintiff cannot plead his own fraud or illegal act as a basis of his claim or as a necessary step towards the success of his claim. His position in that matter was not made better by showing that the defendant had joined him in the fraud or illegal act or by the fraud or illegal act not being pleaded but coming to light in the course of the trial of the suit or even in the hearing of an appeal. The rule applied even where the fraud or illegality disclosed was in contravention of some rule of public policy embodied in a statute. In this case Reilly J. relied on a number of English authorities and did not refer to the decisions of their Lordships of the Privy Council to which reference has already been made in this judgment. Anantakrishna Ayyar J. also referred to a large number of English cases and at the end of his judgment stated:

The Privy Council decisions in 41 Cal 9721 and 48 Cal 5092 are not really applicable to the exact point that we are now considering. The question there was not whether the plaintiff could be allowed to set up his own fraud, but whether registration was properly and validly effected when the question arose with reference to third parties.

23. In my judgment, this Madras case is no authority for the proposition that a mortgagor defendant cannot raise this question of want of valid registration though he may be a party to the fraud on the registration laws. In Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan AIR (1921) PC 8 a mortgagor defendant raised the same question; and their Lordships of the Privy Council held that the deed had not been validly registered. That was a case in which the executants of the mortgage deed were sued and where they, who were parties to the fraud, successfully pleaded want of valid registration. The question did not arise with reference to third parties, as stated by Anantakrishna Ayyar J. but arose in a suit between the mortgagees and the mortgagors. Again in the most recent case, namely Venkata Kama Rao v. Sobhanadri Appa Rao AIR (1986) P C 91, She plaintiff was allowed to put forward the fraud of his father who had acted as his guardian when the property in question was sold.

24. It appears to me that the Court is bound to hold that the defendants are entitled to raise this plea having regard, in particular, to the decision of their Lordships of the Privy Council in Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan AIR (1921) PC 8. In my view the learned Subordinate Judge was wrong in holding that the mortgagor defendants in this case could not raise the question of want of valid registration. It was further urged by Sir Manmatha Nath Mukerji on behalf of the respondents that the learned Subordinate Judge was wrong in admitting evidence as to the intention of the parties to this mortgage. He relied upon Section 92, Evidence Act. That Section is in these terms:

When the terms of any such contract, grant or other disposition of property, or any matter required by law to be reduced to the form of a document, have been proved according to the last Section, no evidence of any oral agreement or statement shall be admitted, as between the parties to any such instrument or their representatives-in-interest, for the purpose of contradicting, varying, adding to, or subtracting from, its terms.

To this Section there are a number of provisos, and by proviso (1):

Any fact may be proved which would invalidate any document, or which would entitle any person to any decree or order relating thereto; such as fraud, intimidation, illegality, want of due execution, want of capacity in any contracting party, want or failure of consideration, or mistake in fact or law.

Sir Manmatha Nath Mukerji has relied upon a number of eases, the first of which is Lachman Das and Another Vs. Ram Prasad and Others, in which Ash-worth J. appears to have held that evidence as to intention was not admissible in considering the question of registration. The point was again expressly considered by Mukerji J. in Kunwar Ram Krishna Vs. Anand Krishna and Others, . The learned Judge held that it was not open to a party to a registered sale deed to prove an oral agreement by evidence either oral or documentary contemporaneous with the sale deed, that in spite of a certain property, belonging to the vendor, being entered in the sale deed, title to it would not pass to the vendee.

25. He further held that where the parties intended to hoodwink the Sub-Registrar by entering a piece of property within his jurisdiction in the sale deed, in order to give that officer jurisdiction, the parties contemplated a fraud on the law of registration and so should not be granted any relief in a Court of Justice. A similar view was taken by the Bombay High Court in Vishvanatbbhat Annabhat v. Mallappa AIR (1925) Bom 514 Macleod C.J. stated:

The appellant relies for his argument that there was a fraud on registration on two cases, Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi AIR (1914) PC 67, in which it was held that none of the properties appearing in the document to be registered was within the jurisdiction of the Registrar, and therefore registration was invalid, and Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan AIR (1921) PC 8 in which it was proved that the transferor had no title to the property mentioned in the transfer deed which would bring it within the jurisdiction of the Registrar. Neither of those cases is applicable to the facts in the present case. But the appellant wishes us to extend those decisions to the facts before us. We are concerned at present with the registration of the sale deed. The Registrar had jurisdiction to register that document, because a portion of the property mentioned in the deed was within his jurisdiction. Clearly, if no property belonging to the transferor appearing in the document to be registered is within the jurisdiction of the Registrar, registration by sub Registrar of that document would be invalid. But we are not prepared to go further and say that evidence can be led With regard to the intention of the parties at the time the principal document was registered to deal again with the portion of the property which was within the jurisdiction of the Registrar and which rendered its registration valid.

These oases certainly afford support for the contention that evidence as to the intention of the parties is not admissible; but in my view such evidence has been clearly admitted by their Lordships of the Privy Council in the oases to which I have referred.

26. In the Calcutta cases, evidence was adduced to show that the property was fictitious in Harendra Lal Roy v. Haridasi Debi AIR (1914) PC 67, and that the mortgagors title to it was imperfect in Biswanath Prasad v. Chandra Narayan AIR (1921) PC 8. Further evidence was admitted in the latter Case with a view to showing that the property was never intended to form part of security. In 56 All 4683 their Lordships at page 494 made the following observation:

In the High Court the learned Judges were of opinion, and their Lordships think rightly so, that they were bound to go into this question of intention, and having done so they arrived at the conclusion that the entry of the sitting room in the deed was not a fictitious entry within the meaning of the decision of the Board already cited.

Here they expressly approved of the view of the learned Judges of the Allahabad High Court that the Court was bound to go into the question of intention. In the judgment of Lord Blanesburgh reference is made to the evidence. At p. 494 there appears this observation:

And this conclusion is assisted by some evidence of Shiam Bathi, the scribe who prepared it. He asked his principal, Ram Ghulam, why a third share of the room was being entered in the deed, as it would be of no use whatever. The answer given in no way disputes that statement of Shiam Bathis who was an ingenuous witness. He knew, he said, that if he agreed that the room was mentioned in the deed merely to enable its being registered at Gorakhpur the suit would fail on the ground of invalid registration. Yet both Courts held that the registration was valid.

27. In this Case their Lordships dealt at length with the question of intention and the evidence relating to it. In the most recent case, Venkata Kama Rao v. Sobhanadri Appa Rao AIR 1986 PC 91, their Lordships again considered the question of the intention of the parties. It appears to me that if the question, which has to be decided, is; the intention of the parties, evidence must; be admissible though it may tend to show; that property ostensibly mortgaged was not in fact intended to be mortgaged. In my view there is nothing in Section 92, Evidence., Act, to render such evidence inadmissible. It is not evidence which varies the terms of the written document as between the parties and their representatives. It is evidence which goes to show that the document did not relate to land within the jurisdiction of the Sub-Registrar who registered it. Further, it may well be said that evidence of this kind is evidence which tends to render the document invalid and such is admissible under Proviso 1 to Section 92, Evidence Act.

28. In my judgment, the evidence as to the intention of the parties in this case was admissible and was rightly admitted by the learned Judge. Lastly, it was contended by the appellants that the Sub-Registrar had no jurisdiction whatsoever to register this mortgage by reason of the fact that the property situate in Mera village was not sufficiently described. It was accordingly urged that this provided another ground for dismissing the plaintiffs claim. This point does not appear to have been urged in the Court below. Section 21, Registration Act, provides:

No non-testamentary document relating to Immovable property shall be accepted for registration unless it contains a description of such property sufficient to identify the same.

It is urged that the land in Mera contains no description sufficient to identify it. What was said to be mortgaged was 5 kathas of land in Mera with no other description of any kind.

29. The description is clearly inadequate to identify the property, and the question arises whether the Sub-Registrar had jurisdiction to register the same. Reliance has been placed by the appellants upon a number of cases. In Baij Nath Tewari v. Sheo Sahay (1891) 18 Cal 556 certain property was described in a mortgage bond as bearing touzi No. 10, as paying a sadr jama of Rs. 719, and as lying within the jurisdiction of thana kotwali, Sub-District Bhagalpur, Gollectorate Bhagalpur. This description was so far erroneous, in that the property was in reality situated in thana Amarpur, Sub-District Banka, and bore a sadr jama of Rs. 919-15-0. Banka was however within the area of the District of Bhagalpur. The mortgage bond was registered by the Sub-Registrar of Bhagalpur, who was, u/s 7, Registration Act, authorized, in addition to his own duties, to exercise and perform the duties and powers of the Registrar of Bhagalpur. It was held by a majority of the Full Bench that the provisions of Section 21 of the Act, had not been complied with; that the description of the property was misleading and insufficient for the purposes of identification, and that therefore no registration of the document had been effected within the provisions of the Registration Act. The Registration Act referred to in this case is the Act of 1877. Section 21 of that Act was however in the same terms as Section 21 of the present Act. A similar view was taken by a Bench of the Calcutta High Court in Srijan Gazi Vs. Abdul Sattar and Others, .

30. It was held that when several immovable properties are mortgaged by the same deed, defect of des-cription in respect of any one of them is sufficient to invalidate the registration of the whole deed. In that case a katha of land in Arrah was misdescribed and the-description was not sufficient to identify the same. The Court held that the registration was invalid.

A Bench of the Allahabad High Court in. Baiyed Mahmud v. Muhammad Zubalr (1909) 31 All 523, expressed a similar view and held that where a letter purported to transfer immovable property and was presented, as a non-testamentary document for registration but was refused on the ground that, it contained no description of the property "sufficient to identify the same," such refusal was under the circumstances proper. The effect of breaches of certain provision, of the Registration Act was considered by their Lordships of the Privy Council in Ma P.wa May v. Chettyar Firm AIR (1929) PC 279 .

31. Their Lordships were not called Upon directly to express an opinion on the point which I am now considering; but. Lord Atkin, who delivered the judgment of the Board, expressly approved of a dictum. of Sir Barnes Peaoook in Bah Mukhun Lall Pandey v. Sah Koondun Lall (1875) 2 IA 210 of that report Sir Barnes Peacock observed:

In considering the effect to be given to Section 49 that Section must be read in conjunction with. Section 88 and with the words of the heading of part 10, "of the Effects of Registration and Non-Registration." Now, considering that the registration of all conveyances of immovable property of the value, of Rs. 100 or upward is by the Act rendered compulsory, and that proper legal advice is not generally accessible to persons taking conveyances of land of small value, it is scarcely reasonable to suppose that it was the intention of the Legislature that every registration of a deed should be null and void by reason of a non-compliance with the provision of Sections 19, 21 or 36, or other similar provisions. It is rather to be inferred that the Legislature intended that such errors or defects should he classed under the general words defect in procedure in Section 88 of the Act, so that innocent and ignorant persons should not be deprived of their property through any error or inadvertence of a public officer, on whom they would naturally place reliance.

Sections 21 and 88, Registration Act, 1866, referred to by Sir Barnes Peacock have now been replaced by Section 21 and 87, Registration Act, 1908; but it is to be observed that the sections are in the same terms. As I have stated, this dictum of Sir Barnes Peacock is expressly approved by Lord Atkin in the Rangoon case and therefore I am extremely doubtful whether the oases of the Calcutta High Court and the Allahabad High Court, to which I have referred, can now be regarded as good law. I am therefore unable to hold that the Registrar had no jurisdiction to register this sale deed by reason of the insufficiency of the description of the land situate in Mera. For the reasons which I have given, I am satisfied that the parties in this case committed a fraud on the registration law and that the registration of the document was consequently invalid.

32. The mortgage therefore cannot be enforced and the plaintiffs claim must fail. The appellants also relied on Section 7, Bihar Money-lenders (Regulation of Transactions) Act, 1939, and contended that in any event a decree could not be passed for more than Rs. 20,000. That contention appears to be well-founded; but it is unnecessary to consider it as I hold that the claim fails in its entirety. I would therefore allow this appeal, set aside the decree of the Court below and dismiss the plaintiffs claim. The defendants unsuccessfully raised a number of issues in the Court below and have not challenged the findings in this Court. I would therefore give the defendant-appellants their costs in. this Court and direct the parties to pay their own costs in the trial Court.

Manohar Lall, J.

33. I agree.