ZULEKHA BIBI Vs. SABIRA BIBI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A very interesting question of law arises in this Second Appeal. The question is what would be the share of the plaintiff-respondents who comprise of the widow, four sons and a daughter in the estate left by their father ? The applicant claims that her share was rightly determined by the Trial Court and wrongly set aside by the lower Appellate Court. It was reduced to only seven sehams out of 80 sehams It was urged that her share would be 1/3 of 7/8 j. e, after deducting 1/8 share of the widow, According to her, her share ought to be 11.65 sehams instead of only 7 sehams granted to her by the court below.

(2.) LEARNED counsel for the respondents, Mr. Haider Husain, urged that a daughter has been allotted only a half portion of the residuary which goes towards the son. In other words their portions have to be adjudged individually and not collectively. He urged that the view taken by the lower appellate court is in accordance with law and must be upheld.

(3.) THIS is the proposition of law which is to be interpreted. It will be significant to notice that the expression daughter or son used in the above sentence nowhere uses the term in plural. The daughter has been mentioned as an individual and so has the son. The ordinary meaning of the proposition quoted above is that a daughter takes a portion as residuary with the son and in that case the sons' portion is twice that of the daughter. In other words individually each son takes a double holding than that of a daughter. In other words the share of each son has to be double of each daughter. In the present case there are four sons and two daughters. So the share of four sons would be four times that of the two daughters, in the ratio of 8 portions to 2.