SULTAN SINGH Vs. RATAN SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a plaintiff's second appeal in a suit for partition of a plot at Orai. The parties are all of them brothers being the sons of Net Singh. Ratan Singh, the first defendant respondent is the eldest of them. Sultan Singh, the plaintiff-appellant is the second; Tej Singh, the second defendant, is the third, and Paras Ram, the third defendant, is the fourth. I may; incidentally mention that Tej Singh, the third respondent, in the second appeal in this Court, has wrongly been described as a plaintiff-respondent. He is, in fact, the defendant-respondent.

(2.) THE pedigree given in the plaint shows that the father of the parties, namely, Net Singh, had two other brothers, Balram and Dal Chand. Balram had five sons of whom Panna Lal was one. Dal Chand had a son, Ram Charan. THE plot, of which the land in suit forms a one-third part, was purchased jointly by Panna Lal, Ram Charan and Ratan Singh under a sale deed, dated the 30th Jan, 1956, which is Ext. A 2 on the record. According to the plaintiff, there was a partition of the plot, into three equal portions between Panna Lal, Ram Charan and Ratan Singh in the beginning of the year 1972, at which the western portion measuring 90' x 35' was allotted to Ram Charan, and, out of the remaining two-thirds portion, the southern portion measuring 70' x 45' was allotted to Panna Lal while the northern portion measuring 70' x 45' was allotted to the plaintiff and the defendants, meaning thereby that it was allotted to Ratan Singh as a representative of Net Singh's branch of the family. It is then alleged that when the land was purchased in 1956, the parties were members of a joint family, and the land was purchased by Ratan Singh from joint family funds as its Karta. THE three defendants filed a joint written statement. THEy denied the plaintiff's case and asserted that he had no share in the land in suit, and was not in possession of any part or portion thereof; that even if he had any right, it was lost by adverse possession for more than twelve years, and that the land was purchased by the first defendant, Ratan Singh, from his own self acquired funds and he alone was the owner. It was then alleged that the plaintiff had separated from the defendants more than twenty years ago and only the cultivation remained joint. THE allegation that the defendant No. 1 was the Karta of the family and that the land was acquired by him from joint family funds as the Karta, was specifically denied as incorrect. This is followed by the allegation that in the year 1970, there was a family settlement between the parties, and a memorandum of the shares allotted to the parties was prepared on the 5th Jan, 1970, which showed the agricultural land and other properties moveable and immoveable allotted to the parties respectively and it was settled that so far as the land in suit was concerned, the defendant No. 1 alone shall remain its owner, and that the parties were in possession of their respective share accordingly.

(3.) LEARNED Counsel for the appellant was rather critical of the way in which the case has been dealt with by the lower Appellate Court. He contended that the land in suit was joint family property and the Paper No. 12 Ka-1, on which the defendants relied on, having been ruled out of evidence as inadmissible, the plaintiff's suit for partition of the land deserved to be decreed.