KASHMIRI LAL AND ANOTHER Vs. MAHENDER AND OTHERS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Kashmiri Lal and Jamna Devi - as legal representatives of original plaintiff Karam Chand (since deceased) have filed this second appeal, having been non-suited by both the courts below.

(2.) Karam Chand filed suit challenging consent decree dated 05.02.1991 passed against him in Civil Suit No. 608 of 1989 titled Mahender Singh etc. Vs. Karam Chand in favour of Mahender Singh etc. - defendants herein, alleging the same to have been obtained by fraud etc. Consequential relief of injunction was also sought. The plaintiff alleged that he was recorded owner of the suit land measuring 11 kanals 15 marlas. Defendants were wrongly recorded in jamabandi to be in cultivating possession of the suit land. The plaintiff requested the defendants in the year 1991 to get the said entries rectified. Agreeing to the same, defendants obtained signatures of the plaintiff on some blank papers for getting the needful done. However, defendants used the said papers to obtain consent decree dated 05.02.1991. The plaintiff alleged that he never appeared in the Court in the previous suit, in which said decree was passed nor made any statement nor filed any written statement therein. It was alleged that no family settlement, as pleaded in the said previous suit, has taken place nor it could take place because the parties are not related to each other.

(3.) Defendants broadly controverted the plaint averments and pleaded that they are owners in possession of the suit land. Possession of the suit land had been handed over to them on 04.10.1983, for which plaintiff also made statement in the presence of then Sarpanch Daulat Ram and accordingly, report No. 62 dated 04.10.1983 was made in Roznamcha Patwari and said report was signed by plaintiff after reading it. The defendants were thus already in possession of the suit land long before the impugned consent decree was passed. The grounds to challenge the consent decree, as pleaded by the plaintiff, are false and baseless. It was also pleaded that plaintiff herein engaged Mr. V. S. Dhillon, Advocate as his counsel in the previous suit and filed written statement and also made statement in the Court. Various other pleas were also raised.