Further in Pramod Kumari Bhatia v. Om Prakash Bhatia10 this Court also in more or less an identical situation laid down that since an application to the High Court has been made very many years after the filing of the suit and also quite some years after the appeal had been filed before the High Court, question of interfering with the discretion exercised by the High Court in refusing to receive an additional evidence at that stage would not arise. The time-lag in the matter under consideration is also enormous and the additional evidence sought to be produced was as a matter of fact after a period of 10 years after the filing of the appeal. Presently, the suit was instituted in the year 1981 and the decree therein was passed in 1983. The first appeal was filed before the High Court in April 1983 but the application for permission to adduce additional evidence came to be made only in August 1993. Needless to record that the courts shall have to be cautious and must always act with great circumspection in dealing with the claims for letting in additional evidence particularly, in the form of oral evidence at the appellate stage and that too, after a long lapse of time. In our view, a plain reading of Order 41 Rule 27 would depict that the rejection of the claim for production of additional evidence after a period of 10 years from the date of filing of the appeal, as noticed above, cannot be termed to be erroneous or an illegal exercise of discretion. The three limbs of Rule 27 do not stand attracted. The learned trial Judge while dealing with the matter has, as a matter of fact, very strongly commented upon the lapse and failure on the part of the plaintiffs even to summon the attestors to the will and in our view contextually, the justice of the situation does not warrant any interference. The attempt, the High Court ascribed it to be a stage-managed affair in order to somehow defeat the claim of the respondents — and having had the privilege of perusal of record we lend our concurrence thereto and the finding of the High Court cannot be found fault with for rejecting the prayer of the appellants
