BABULAL VAKATAJI SHAH Vs. CHANDABAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is by the defendant in O.S.No. 11/1964 on the file of the Principal Civil Judge, Belgaum and is directed against the said concurrent judgments and decrees of both the Court-below i.e., O.S.No. 11/64 subsequently affirmed by the I Additional District Judge, Belgaum in R.A.No. 10/1973, granting the plaintiff in the suit who is respondent herein a decree enabling rendition of accounts of a firm M/s. Shah Vaktaji Dalichand and Company, Gokak of which her husband Dalichand was a partner, during his lifetime. The correctness and the legality of the abovesaid decree is challenged herein, on the very short ground that the plaintiffs suit barred by time as on the date, it was instituted. Regrettably the respondent who was in the plaintiff in the Court-below a lady by name Chandabai unrepresented in this Court despite of service of notice on her. I have to mention at the outset that she was represented by an advocate of this Court Sri Jestamal, who subsequently sought and obtained permission to retire from the case for want of instruction, after serving a registered notice on her disclosing his intention to retire from the case. Subsequently, the respondent has not chosen to engage anybody else in place of Mr. Jestamal and therefore I have not had the benefit of any argument on her behalf.

(2.) But, then, Mr. Mandagi, who appears for the appellants has been good enough to take me through the whole of the records and also assisted me by providing information regarding all the law then obtained on that point. With the result, I have not been handicapped by the omission of the other side in being represented in this Court by Counsel.

(3.) As earlier mentioned, the whole case turns on a short point being whether the plaintiffs suit was in time. On this point both the Courts below have held that suit to be in time relying on Section 17 of the Limitation Act, holding that the cause of action enabling the plaintiff to institute the suit arose only after she discovered the factum of fraud having been practiced on her by the defendants, who had successfully prevented her from approaching the Court by inducing in her a belief that she was being continued as a partner in the firm in question in place of her deceased husband. The plaintiff having learnt, of late, that she was not made a partner of that firm and the representation made to her by the defendants in that behalf was thoroughly false, she had thereafter hastened to the Court with this suit.