Practice and Procedure — Finding of fact — When to be treated as perverse?

September 5th, 2013

Practice and Procedure — Finding of fact — When to be treated as perverse? — Held, findings of fact recorded by a court can be held to be perverse if the findings have been arrived at by ignoring or excluding relevant material or by taking into consideration irrelevant/inadmissible material — The finding may also be said to be perverse if it is “against the weight of evidence”, or if the finding so outrageously defies logic as to suffer from the vice of irrationality.

Rajinder Kumar Kindra v. Delhi Administration, AIR 1984 SC 1805; Kuldeep Singh v. Commissioner of Police & Ors., AIR 1999 SC 677; Gamini Bala Koteswara Rao & Ors. v. State of Andhra Pradesh thr. Secretary, AIR 2010 SC 589 & Babu v. State of Kerala, (2010) 9 SCC 189, Referred.

(Para 24)

HELD: The findings of fact recorded by a court can be held to be perverse if the findings have been arrived at by ignoring or excluding relevant material or by taking into consideration irrelevant/inadmissible material. The finding may also be said to be perverse if it is “against the weight of evidence”, or if the finding so outrageously defies logic as to suffer from the vice of irrationality. If a decision is arrived at on the basis of no evidence or thoroughly unreliable evidence and no reasonable person would act upon it, the order would be perverse. But if there is some evidence on record which is acceptable and which could be relied upon, the conclusions would not be treated as perverse and the findings would not be interfered with.

Hence, where there is evidence of malpractice, gross irregularity or illegality, interference is permissible.

(Para 24)

S.R. Tewari v. Union of India[Bench Strength 2], Civil Appeal Nos. 4715-4716/2013 (Arising out of S.L.P. (C) Nos. 22263-22264/2012)(28/05/2013), 2013(7) SCALE 417: 2013(4) Supreme 457: 2013(5) SLT 597: 2013(9) JT 31: 2013(6) SCC 602 [B.S. Chauhan, J.: Dipak Misra, J.]

Entry Filed under: Legal Updates