GANESH GANGADHAR Vs. RAGHAVENDRA BHARATHI SWAMIJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner in this revision petition was the defendant in the Court of the Civil Judge, Kunita, in which the respondent was the plaintiff, who brought a suit against him for the recovery of Rs. 491-3-0 which amount, according to the plaintiff, had been received by the defendant from the Collector between the year 1949 and the year 1952. It is not disputed that these amounts represented the grants which the plaintiff was entitled to recover from the Collector. The plaintiff is the Matadhipathi of a Mutt known as Ramachandrapurmath and the case for the plaintiff was that the defendant, who was an agent appointed by the predecessor Swamiji, had collected the grants due to the Mutt, in the manner mentioned above, masquerading himself as the agent of the plaintiff Mutt although his agency had terminated when the predecessor Swamiji died. The allegation in the plaint was, as I understand it, that the defendant had wrongfully retained those monies which he had collected in that capacity.

(2.) The defendant resisted the suit on the ground that for from his being liable to pay to the Mutt any sum of money, the mutt itself was liable to pay him a sum of Rs. 2,000/- which represented the remuneration due to him. His case was that he had not ceased to be the agent of the Mutt after the death of the previous Swamiji and that, on the contrary, he continued to be an agent even thereafter. His case was that, in the capacity, as the agent of the Mutt, he had collected the sum of money in question from the Collector. He also contended that a portion of the amount so collected had been utilised for the expenses of the Mutt.

(3.) All the contentions urged by the defendant were negatived by the learned Civil Judge, and the appeal which the defendant preferred from the decree which the learned Civil Judge made in favour of the plaintiff was also unsuccessful.