RAMALINGAM Vs. MANICKA GOUNDER AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS second appeal is from Pondicherry. It raises a question as to how the law of intestate succession operates in the territory of Pondicherry, when a Hindu father dies possessed of ancestral property and leaves both male and female issue.

(2.) IN this case, one Arumugha of Pondicherry had two sons and two daughters. He died in 1966, possessed of an item of ancestral immovable property. After his death, one of his daughters, Muniammal, purported to sell an one -fourth share in that property to one Manicka. The sale was effected apparently under the impression that Muniammal was entitled under the law to one -fourth share as one of her father's four children. The sale was in the year 1968. While so, Arumugha's elder son, Subramanian, executed a sale of the very same property in the next year 1969, to one Ramalinga. He purported to sell the property, as kartha of the family and for necessity.

(3.) IN 1972, Manicka brought a suit in the Additional District Munsif's Court, Pondicherry for partition and separate possession of one -fourth share in the property, as purchaser from Muniammal. In that suit, he impleaded his vendor Muniammal and also the other heirs of Arumugham. He also impleaded, as the fifth defendant in the suit Ramalinga, who had purchased the suit property from Subramania.