Estoppel under The Indian Evidence Law

ESTOPPEL UNDER INDIAN EVIDENCE LAW.

Estoppel basically means if you give any false information or make false any promise to someone and that person who you gave such false information,  acts upon it than the court will estop you from telling the truth and will make you fulfil the promise. This concept is mentioned under section 115 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.

lets understand this in more simple words:-

Imagine a boy named Rahul tells his friend Suraj any false information or makes any false promise to him. Suraj believing that the information and the promised made by his friend Rahul is true and he accordingly acts upon it. And later Rahul tells Suraj that the information he told him and the promise he made to him was fake than the court stops Rahul from telling the truth and makes Rahul to fulfil the promise.

ILLUSTRATION

1)  If in a railway station your luggage gets lost and you tell the police that there was total 1000 Rs in your luggage but later in court you tell that there was 1 lakh Rs in your luggage. Here court will stop you from denying the earlier statement.

2)  A son sold his mother's property Infront of her and the mother did no effort to stop the son or complaint against him. Therefore the Court will stop her from complaining later that it was her property.

3)  A seller falsely represents a buyer that 'X' and 'Y' and 'Z' is his property. And the buyer believing the seller buys all the three property. But in reality only 'X' and 'Y' is the seller's property, while 'Z' is the property of seller's father. Later the seller's father dies and the seller gets the 'Z' property through succession. After that the seller goes to the buyer and says that 'Z' property is no more of the buyers because at the time of sale the seller didn't have the ownership of the 'Z' property, so the sale was invalid and therefore the seller asks the buyer to give back the 'Z' property. Than the buyer files a case against him and the court stops the seller from telling any truth and holds that the sale was valid and 'Z' property belongs to the buyer and not to the seller due to the principle of estoppel.

4)  A student got high marks in this results and based on that result the student got admissions in a good college, Later the school states that there was a mistake in that student's marksheet and he didn't get high marks. Here court will estop the school from denying the marksheet. 

In this similar illustration, incase the student actually got high marks but the school mistakenly printed the marksheet with low scores than the student can complaint and get it corrected, Here the principle of estoppel doesn't apply.

Essential ingredients / Principles of Estoppel 

1)  Representation. 

One person should falsely represent to another person an that another person believes it to be true.

2)  Other party acted upon the representation.

When another person does some act by innocently believing the false representation to be true.

3)  Other party altered his positions.

when another person changes its position publicly on believing the false representation to be true. (example, a person believes the false representation of the seller and buys the property and makes sale deed, here the person alters his position from a buyer to owner by buying that property.)

Reference:-

Textbook - Principles of the law of Evidence, Fifteenth Edition by Dr. Avtar Singh.