SUBRAMONIA IYER Vs. SANKARA IYER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE father of minor defendants 1 to 4 who had been appointed as guardian ad litem has filed this appeal. THE plaintiff is the son of the sister of one Pichu Ammal who is now dead. This Pichu Ammal was a brahmin widow. On 28. 4. 1115 she had executed a gift deed for the plaint properties in favour of one Valliammal, the mother of the defendants. This valli Ammal was the daughter's daughter of Pichu Ammal's deceased brother sankaranarayana Iyer. Valli Ammal died in 1116 Pichu Ammal then executed Ext. B on 6. 12. 1116 cancelling the gift deed Ext. A to Valli Ammal. THE same day she had executed Ext. E, a gift deed for the plaint and other properties in favour of the plaintiff in the case. It was the plaintiff's allegation that Valli ammal had no knowledge of the execution of Ext. A gift deed in her favour, nor had she accepted the same. She had also not acted according to the provisions made therein. According to him Ext. A was therefore an invalid document. THE properties covered by Ext. A remained in the possession of Pichu Ammal, and the plaintiff stated that after Pichu Ammal's death he got possession of the same. THE plaintiff applied before the Taluk Office, Thovala for mutation of name in the revenue records. This was not allowed by the Tahsildar. His appeal against the order before the Assistant Peishkar, Padmanabhapuram, and the revision petition before the Division Peishkar, Trivandrum, were unsuccessful. This has cast a cloud on his title, and so he prayed for the cancellation of the orders passed by the revenue authorities. He also prayed for an injunction restraining the defendants from interfering with his possession, and for a direction to the revenue authorities to grant him Patta pursuant to Ext. E gift deed in his favour.

(2.) THE guardian of the minor defendants contested the case. He had stated that the gift deed Ext. A to Valli Ammal was a valid document, that she had accepted the same, that the donor herself had produced the original gift deed for registration and got it back, that the donor had the custody of the gift deed and the prior title deeds on behalf of the donee, that when it was necessary for Valli Ammal to go and render assistance to Pichu ammal, the former went and resided with Pichu Ammal at her residence in erachikulam, that Ext. A gift deed was valid and enforceable, that for the execution of the gift deed by Pichu Ammal to the plaintiff, Pichu Ammal was not a conscious party, that she was also absolutely incompetent to execute the gift deed Ext. E, that the plaintiff had not obtained possession of the plaint properties, for they were still with Pichu Ammal's lessees, that the orders passed by the revenue authorities mentioned in the plaint were all correct, that the minor defendants had obtained Patta for the properties after the death of pichu Ammal, that the suit was wanting in bona fides and that it was conceived in the hope that the defendants being poor could not effectively resist the plaintiff who was a vakil of the District Court, Nagercoil. THEy therefore prayed for the dismissal of the suit with costs. THEy filed an additional written statement in which it was stated that though Ext. A was styled a gift deed, it was in effect a settlement deed, and that it was referred to as the gift deed in the previous written statement because it had been so described in ext. A.

(3.) IN the cancellation deed Ext. B executed by Pichu ammal after the death of Valli Ammal, it was nowhere state that Ext. A gift deed had not come into operation because Valli Ammal had not accepted the same. Pichu Ammal had also no case in Ext. B that Ext. A was executed due to fraud or misrepresentation. The execution of a gift deed in a small village like erachakulam would be known to all the parties in the locality. There was a car brought to the village to take Pichu Ammal to the Sub Registrar's Office, nagercoil, which is four miles away from Erachakulam. One of the attestors to the gift deed was one Krishna Iyer Ganapathi Iyer who was mentioned to be one of the trustees of the Brahmin trust at Erachakulam. Another witness who is d. W. 1 is also a resident of Erachakulam. But he is of a different caste. The execution of Ext. A was therefore with the full knowledge of the villagers. Ordinarily, such a gift deed would be executed after due deliberation and with the concurrence of the persons benefited by the gift. IN this case, there is the evidence of D. Ws. 1, 3 and 4 to show that Valli Ammal had accepted the gift deed. D. W. 1 is an attestor to Ext. A. He was also examined as an identifying witness before the Sub-Registrar. He stated that the parties returned to erachakulam from Nagercoil by about 8 P. M. with Ext. A and that Pichu Ammal then handed over the gift deed to Valli Ammal who placed it in a trunk which was inside the dwelling house. No doubt, it would appear that there was some sort of artificiality in the part said to have been played by Valli Ammal. But the evidence was clear to show that after registration of the gift deed, D. W. 1 and others returned to Pichu Ammal's house at Erachakulam where Valli Ammal was present with her minor children. That was what Valli Ammal's husband also deposed as D. W. 4. There is the further fact that Valli Ammal's husband had accompanied Pichu Ammal to the Sub-Registrar's Office for the purpose of rendering the necessary help to Pichu Ammal to execute the gift deed. If Valli ammal had not accepted the gift, there would have been no occasion for D. W. 4 to go to the Sub-Registrar's Office. The gift itself was for 91 cents of paddy land, and in view of the poor circumstances of Valli Ammal, her husband and children would have been only too glad to accept the gift by the mere mention of it.