In Brief
Three brothers disputed property after their partition deed of 1980. The appellants claimed they had entered a family settlement (Khararunama) in 1986 and later paid Rs 2 lakh for the respondent's vacation. The respondent denied these arrangements, alleging the appellants forged his signature. The trial court admitted the unregistered settlement and receipt, but the High Court rejected them as unregistered and unstamped documents. The Supreme Court held that an unregistered family settlement recording a past transaction is admissible as corroborative evidence of the parties' arrangement and conduct, without breaching registration laws, because it does not itself create or extinguish property rights.
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