PROBODH KUMAR DAS Vs. DANTMARA TEA CO LTD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal relates to a tea garden in the district of Chittagong, known as the Kaicherra Tea Estate, which at one time belonged to the Kaiyacherra Tea Company, Limited. The estate was mortgaged to Messrs Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. of Calcutta who in 1930 obtained an order for the compulsory winding-up of the Tea Company. Thereafter the estate was put up to auction by the liquidators and purchased by Messrs. Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. Without obtaining any conveyance in their favour Messrs. Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. on October 10, 1931, by an interchange of letters of offer and acceptance agreed to sell the estate to one S. N. Roy, who paid the first instalment of the price and entered into possession. No conveyance was ever executed in pursuance of this contract of sale, but the plaintiffs in the present suit, now the appellants, claim to have acquired at least in part the purchaser's rights under it. The estate has been the subject of a complicated series of transactions which it is fortunately not necessary to detail for the purpose of deciding the only question argued before their Lordships. These transactions are fully set out in the judgments of the Subordinate Judge and the High Court and account for the varied assortment of defendants to the suit.

(2.) THE first defendants and respondents, the Dantmara Tea Company, Limited, to whom alone it is necessary to refer, claim on the other hand to be the proprietors of the estate under (1) a duly registered deed of assignment in their favour by the partners of Messrs, Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. , dated June 1, 1934, which narrates inter alia the failure of S. N. Roy to complete the contract of sale of October 10, 1931, and (2) a duly registered deed of sale, also dated June 1, 1934, by the Kaiyacherra Tea Company, Limited, and the liquidators of that company and by the partners of Messrs. Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co.

(3.) IT is in these circumstances that the plaintiffs brought the present suit in which they seek to have it declared that the Dantmara Tea Company, Limited, and others have no right or title to the estate and are debarred from enforcing any right to the estate, including the right to sell tea under the export quota allotted to it or to transfer the quota rights to any person. They also seek an injunction.