GANI ABDULLA Vs. NENNMAL JAIN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This first appeal is filed against the decree passed by the City Civil Court in the year 1977 decreeing the suit filed by the plaintiff in the year 1964 in that Court. The facts to which the instant suit relates are even of much earlier period. At least from the year 1946, if not earliest still. The suit relates to the plaintiffs right to possession of one room and a kitchen in the suit premises, namely a tenement consisting of two rooms and a kitchen in a building called Navnidhan Bhuvan, 313, Masjid Bunder Road, Bombay. Evidently, the suit premises have a great commercial value and that is the reason why it has become the subject matter of quite a spate of litigation.

(2.) The facts which are relevant for the purpose of this appeal are the following :---

(3.) Defendant No. 1 filed his written statement and denied the plaintiffs right to recover possession of the suit premises. He stoutly denied the fact that he was ever a licensee of A. Manoharlal & Co. His contention has been that his father Abdulla was the sub-tenant in respect of the suit premises right from the time when Ayohanoff was the tenant of the same. He contended that his sub-tenancy continued even after Sobhagchand came to occupy the tenement as the tenant of the same and even thereafter when A. Manoharlal & Co. came to occupy the tenement as the tenant, he contended that he was the sub-tenant of the suit premises, namely one room near the kitchen in the tenement and as such was fully protected by the provisions of the Bombay Rent Act.