BODDAPATI AYYANNA Vs. KUNDETI KOTAYYA MINOR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants before us are the 2nd, 10th, 12th, defendants and the legal representatives of the 13th. These have appealed against the judgment by a learned single Judge of the High Court where-by the decrees of the lower Courts were modified and the respondent has been held entitled to possession of half-share in immovable properties forming items 1 to 5 of Schedule B and1 item 6 of B-1 Schedule to the plaint. The respondent has filed cross-objection against the rejection by all the Courts of his claim to properties in C Schedule, which cover immovables in the name of the 1st defendant. The following pedigree would show the relation between the plaintiff and some of the defendants:

(2.) The plaintiff was the only male member in the family when Kundeti Chanchayya died. The deceased, who was a landholder of Netivari Palem had married three wives out of whom the second and the third had survived him. After the death of the 1st wife he had married Yellamma, who was then a minor of six years.

(3.) That perhaps had led to the marriage with Chinnammai, who was then sixteen years of age and had begun soon after to live with husband. He had no male issue by the first wife or by the third. The second gave birth to a son Ramaswami on 25/07/1928, but he lived only for about three years. It is common ground that about a year earlier to the plaintiffs birth the father had given a notice to his second wife, imputing desertion and unchastity and stigmatising the child born to her as illegitimate. The plaintiff was born on 16/07/1932.The plea of the plaintiffs illegitimacy put forward in the written statements of the contesting defendants in this case had been abandoned in the High Court and the findings of the two lower courts are also in his favour. It is common ground that during the lifetime of the father the plaintiff and his mother had to leave the family house and were living at Maddullur. Indeed while the father was alive a notice on behalf of the minor son through the mother was given demanding a partition of his half-share in the family properties. This document is of 24/02/1933 and is Ex. P-1. We would reproduce here the following extract from the notice in the judgment of the learned single Judge of the High Court: