NALLURI KRISTNAMMA Vs. KAMEPALLI VENKATASUBBAYYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal by the plaintiffs from a decree, dated the 11th September, 1914 of the High Court at Madras, which affirmed a decree, dated the 19th December, 1910, of the Subordinate Judge of Guntur, which dismissed the suit. The suit in which this appeal has arisen was instituted on the 27th April, 1906 in the Court of the District Judge of Guntur, and was subsequently transferred to the Court of the Subordinate Judge in which it was entered as Original Suit No. 1 of 1910. The plaintiffs in this suit (No. 1 of 1910) were Nalluri Krishnamma and his brother, Nalluri Adinarayudu. The original defendants in this suit were Kamepalli Ramalingam, who is now dead, and his sons, Kamepalli Venkatasubbayya and Kamepalli Seshu. Nalluri Lingayya, who is a natural brother of these plaintiffs, was added as a defendant to the suit on the 17th September, 1908, and is a nominal respondent to this appeal. He has not appeared, and it has been stated by counsel for the appellant that Nalluri Lingayya has been adopted, according to Hindu law, into another family ,and is not interested in the suit or in this appeal.

(2.) IN 1907 Kamepalli Ramalingam and his sons, Kamepalli Venkatasubbayya and Kamepalli Seshu, instituted a suit in the Court of the District Judge of Guntur against Nalluri Kristnamma. Nalluri Adinarayudu, and others, which was subsequently transferred to the Court of the Subordinate Judge, in which it was entered as Original Suit No. 2 of 1910. The two suits (No. 1 of 1910 and No. 2 of 1910) were tried together by the Subordinate Judge, and the evidence in each suit was used in the other. The Subordinate Judge made a separate decree in each suit. Those decrees were appealed to the High Court at Madras which dismissed the appeal from the decree in Suit No. 2 of 1910, and from that decree of the High Court there has been no appeal.

(3.) THE three sons of Nalluri Lakshminarasu with their families lived together as a joint Hindu family in the village of Manga-moor, and as a joint family possessed a large ancestral estate and some movable property. Mangamoor is a village of Guntur in Nellore. Lingappa Naidu was twice married. He had by his first wife a daughter, Ramalakshnamma, who over sixty years ago married Kamepalli Ramakristnamma and bore to him a son, Kamepalli Ramalingam, who was the father of the defendants-respondents, Kamepalli Venkatasubbayya and Kamepalli Seshu. By his second wife Lingappa Naidu had a son, Venkatachalam, who was the father of the plaintiffs and of the added defendant. Kamepalli Ramakristnamma was a near relation of Lingappa Naidu, and lived in his house as one of his family, and assisted in the management of the property. Lingapp Naidu took Kamepalli Ramakristnamma as his illatom son-in-law after Venkatachalam was born, and when Venkatachalam was three or four years of age promising to give him a share of his property. Lingappa Naidu died before 1896. In 1896 his two surviving brothers, Kristnamma Naidu and Kodandarama, and their nephew, Venkatachalam, separated and partly partitioned the family estate. Venkatachalam died on the 23rd August, 1904. THE Subordinate Judge found as a fact that Ramakristnamma lived in the family with his wife and children, and that after his death Kamepalli Ramalingam, Kamepalli Venkatasubbayya, and Kamepalli Seshu continued to live in the family, and lived with Venkatachalam after the division of 1896 until about six months before Venkatachalam's death; that finding was not dissented from by the High Court. THE Subordinate Judge considered that those facts corroborated the evidence, which he believed, that there had been an illatom adoption.