PR N SM CHOCKALINGAM CHETTIAR Vs. OFFICIAL ASSIGNEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from a decision of the High Court of Madras (in its appellate jurisdiction), which varied an order made by the same Court (in its insolvency jurisdiction), which had reversed an order made by the Official Assignee of Madras. It will be convenient in the first place to state shortly the events which led up to this appeal.

(2.) IN 1919 there existed an undivided Hindu family, consisting of the father A.R. Somasundaram and his four sons Arunachalam, Ramanathan, Sundaresan and Lakshmanan, which carried on business in divers places in British INdia, and at Jaffna and Colombo in Ceylon. IN 1919 Ramanathan died and in 1923 the father died. On May 14, 1925, letters of administration w:re granted by the District Court of Jaffna to Arunachalam and Sundaresan on the footing that their father had died intestate; but subsequently the Secretary of the Court was associated in the administration as official administrator, and was virtually in charge of the administration.

(3.) MEANWHILE a suit had been instituted on January 19, 1926, in the District Court of Colombo (No.18800) by one Panya Reena Navenna Soranna Mana Somasundaram (hereinafter for brevity referred to as Panya) against the Secretary of the Court of Jaffna, the official administrator of the father of the insolvents, praying for judgment against the defendant as official administrator for a sum of Rs. 1,61,127, being the amount alleged to be due to the plaintiff in respect of moneys advanced to the said father and interest thereon. Panya died in March, 1929, and subsequently his son the appellant was substituted as plaintiff and Messrs. Harding and Thornton were substituted as defendants in the Colombo suit No.18800. Judgment was delivered in that suit on January 12, 1933, and resulted in a decree of that date, by which it was ordered that Messrs. Harding and Thornton as administrators of A.R. Somasundaram do pay to the appellant as administrator of the estate of Panya "the sum of Rs. 1,61,127/22 with interest thereon at the rate of nine per centum per annum from the 20th January, 1926, till payment in full and costs of suit." Following on this judgment the appellant seems to have attached a fund in the Jaffna Court.