CHAUDHRI SATGUR PRASAD Vs. KISHORE LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal from a judgment of the High Court of Allahabad, affirming the conclusion come to by the Subordinate Judge of Gorakhpur. The only question of substance is when time began to run under the Indian Limitation Act against a claim to recover possession made by the first respondent. The property in dispute was held by a Hindni lady called Dilla Kunwari. She died in 1895, and the controversy turns on whether her possession was that of one claiming adversely as against any other title, or whether, as the Courts below have held, that possession was not adverse but under licence from or by permission of the predecessors-in-title of the first respondent, a licence or permission granted during the lady's lifetime, in order to afford her the maintenance which she claimed an a widow. In that case time did not begin to run against his claim until she died in 1895, and the Limitation Act has not operated so as to defeat this action.

(2.) IT will be convenient, in order to make the situation of the parties intelligible, to set out the pedigree in a table : Murlidhar (common ancestor)| | || Sewak Ram Nagar MalBuddhu Lal || Mansa Ram Adhar Singh || Har Parshad Jeobodh Lal || --------------- | | || Bhawani Dayal Basant Lal Hanuman Prasad Hanwant Parshad |Prasad (died 1851) |Debi Sahai (died 1859) | | Kishan ------------- ------------ | | | |Raj Kishor LalKishen Dilla Raghubans(Plaintiff and first respondent)Kunwari Kunwari Kunwari | Jadubans Kunwari | (widow)Harbans Lal (died 1885, (widow) (widow) | widow)(Plaintiff and second respondent)Jadunath Kunwari (died 1895,daughter)|Jagarnath(daughter)|---------------------- | |Chaudri Sheo Chaudri SatgurShanhar Lal (son) Prasad (son)(first defendant, now de-(second defendantceased, in whose place those and appellant)claiming as his legal representatives were substituted)

(3.) IT is with reluctance that their Lordships differ from the concurrent opinions of the two Courts below on this point; but it is one in reality of legal inference from documents and not on finding of fact, arid their Lordships are unable to draw the inferences made by the Subordinate Judge and followed by the High Court. To begin with, the so called "compromise" with Basant was not a compromise at all. IT was a mere arrangement that, according to the alleged family custom, his name should be entered in place of that of his deceased brother, Bhawani, so that he might pay the Government revenue arid manage the estate, the ladies messing jointly with him and controlling the servants and the property. Such an arrangement was probably a convenient one under the circumstances, as is further explained in an application of the ladies to the Tahsildar, dated the 8th December, 1851, on the ground that the step was customary when ladies were pardanashin. and, as the document says, was an arrangement designed to obviate disputes. But it does not appear to settle any questions of title, or to show, as the learned Judge thought, that Basant was made the owner to the exclusion of the ladies from every title excepting one to maintenance. IT renders natural the subsequent conduct of Dilla in what appears to their Lordships to have been a succession of assertions of ownership after Basant's death. Even from the written statement of the 19th June, 1867, relied on by the learned Subordinate Judge as showing that Dilla claimed possession in mere enforcement of a right to maintenance, it is clear that she claimed much more; for she asserts that she was the "patni" or wedded wife of Bhawani, and as such entitled as full heir to a share of the separate property which she alleges was what he possessed. In another written statement, which she put in in a suit brought against her by Jadunath in 1870, she asserts that she and Kishen were their husband's heirs, and had all along been in possession as such. IT is only as an alternative plea that in this document she seta up a title to possession on the footing of a right to maintenance. The application of Dilla, dated the 6th September, 1861, made for a record of title after the deaths of Basant's two widows, contains an assertion, thus publicly made, that she and Kishen had become by these deaths the heirs and the only heirs to the property. IT appears that mutation into Dilla's name duly followed on this application. Again in 1880 Dilla made an absolute gift for religious purposes of a part of the property. Their Lordships think that it is impossible in the face of these open assertions of full title, to draw the inference that Dilla claimed no more than such a possession as would yield her maintenance during her life; nor does it appear to them that certain admissions suggested as having been made by the defendants in the various proceedings referred to by the learned Judge who tried the case are such as to preclude them from setting up the real nature of Dilla's possession. Further, they do not think that anything decided in the previous suits referred to by the Subordinate Judge, to which neither the respondents nor any person through whom they claim were parties, precludes the appellant from now setting up in the present suit that Dilla's possession was adverse as against the respondents.