BHARAT BANK LTD Vs. SEHGAL BROTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS order will dispose of Execution First Appeal No. 56 of 1958 and Execution First Appeal No. 419 of 1958. The parties to both these appeals are the same. The decree -holder is the Bharat Bank, now Bharat Nidhi, and the judgment -debtors are M/s. Sehgal Bros., Ram Sarn Dass Sehgal, Pran Nath Sehgal and Puran Chand Sehgal son of Ram Sarn Sehgal.

(2.) THE Bank obtained two decrees against the judgment -debtors - -one form the Amristar Court on 30 -1 -1953, for a sum of Rs. 9128 -15 -8 with costs and future interest and the other from the Jullunder Court on 3 -7 -1953, for a sum of Rs. 31,237 -12 -0 with costs and future interest. Execution was taken out of the Jullundur decree in the first instance. In Execution, a compromise was entered into on the 12th of March, 1955. The terms of this compromise are set out below:

(3.) AFTER hearing the learned counsel for the parities I am of the view that the contention of Mr. Puri is sound and must prevail. The decision of the present controversy depends on the true construction of the compromise. If the compromise is read as a whole and particularly clause 4, it will be apparent that it merely provides the mode of discharging the decrees, and does not create any new liability. The other clauses Nos. 5 and 6 of the compromise merely provide guarantees for the carrying out of the compromise. Read in this manner, it cannot be said that the compromise creates a new contract or that the decrees that were passed by the Amritsar and the Jullundur Courts have been wiped out. As a matter of fact, after the compromise neither the parties nor the Court treated the decrees as having been wiped out. The execution applications were consigned to the record room not on the basis that the decrees had been adjusted, but on the ground that the decrees were still subsisting and would only be adjusted after the compromise had been carried out fully.