AHMED IBRAHIM SINGAPORI Vs. COLLECTOR OF SURAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are a series of civil revision applications, which all raise the same point and are directed to a single judgment given by the learned District Judge of Surat.

(2.) THE facts are not quite the same in all the applications, but in the first application, which is No.167 of 1938, the facts are that there is a wakf, the mutwallis of which reside within the limits of the jurisdiction of the Surat District Court, but the whole of the property of the wakf, which consists of immoveable property and shares, is situate in Burma. THE shares are shares in companies registered in Rangoon, and the general rule is that the local situation of a share is the place where the share can be transferred on the register of the company. As far as the evidence goes, there is nothing to sug-gest that these Rangoon companies have any office within the Surat District at which their shares can be transferred. So that, we deal with the application on the footing that the whole of the corpus of the wakf property is situate in Burma, which is now outside British India, though, in our opinion, the real question is whether the property is situate within the local limits of the jurisdiction of the Surat District Court, and it does not matter whether property not so situate is situate within or without British India. THE question which arises is, as to whether the mutwallis of this wakf can be called upon to contribute to the Wakf Administration Fund under Section 61 of the Mussalman Wakf (Bombay Amendment) Act, 1935.

(3.) THE view of the learned District Judge was that, inasmuch as the bulk of the income is spent in Surat or its neighbourhood and the trustees reside there, he had jurisdiction to direct a contribution to the Fund in respect of all wakfs which have been registered in the district of Surat. But, in our opinion, there is nothing in the Act which extends the jurisdiction of the Court to cases in which the trustees reside within the district, or in which they apply income within the district. If seems to us that the only relevant fact to consider is the place where the wakf property is situate, and Section 3 of the main Act and also Section 6D of the Amendment Act, in our view, make it clear that the property of the wakf referred to in the sections is the corpus, and not the income. No doubt in a case where the trustees of a wakf live in a place1 where the beneficiaries of the wakf also live, though the property of the wakf is situate elsewhere, and the trustees merely employ an agent to collect the income of the wakf property and transmit it to them, there would be some force in the contention that the trustees could be called upon to account at the place where they collect and distribute the income ; but we are unable to give that meaning to the Act. It seems to us that the jurisdiction of the Court is confined entirely to cases in which the wakf property is situate within the limits of its jurisdiction.