CHUHAR SINGH Vs. HARI SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) CHUHAR Singh Plaintiff whose suit has been dismissed by both the courts below has preferred this second appeal. By a registered deed dated 6 -2 -1983, one Mit Singh of Fanj Grain Kalan, a village in the erstwhile Faridkot State, appointed Hari Singh, his 3rd degree collateral as his heir. The adaptor died on 26 -4 -2002 and the present suit for a declaration that Hari Singh's adoption was invalid and for possession of as much land as represented his share, in the property left by Mit Singh, was instituted by Chuhar Singh who is also a third degree collateral of Mit Singh on 26 -8 -2002. It was stated in the plaint that the land which was contemplated to be transferred through the alleged adoption was ancestral, and that the adopter could not by adopting Hari Singh deprive his other reversionary heirs' right to succeed to his property on his death. To bring the suit within time benefit of Section 6, Limitation Act, was claimed on the ground that the Plaintiff was a minor when the adoption took place. The adoptee controverted the allegations in the plaint and further urged in defence that the suit was time barred. The following five issues were framed:

(2.) I will first take up the question whether the appointment of Hari Singh has been proved and was valid. Mit Singh had no issue and it is not disputed by Shri Nehra that according to general custom prevailing amongst agriculturists in this part of the country, a sonless proprietor can appoint one of his kinsmen to succeed him as his heir. He, however, urges that there is a special custom governing Sidhu Jats of village Panj Grain (the parties are Sidhu Jats of that village) which imposes certain conditions without observing which an appointment of an heir remaining invalid. Those conditions are contained in the answer to question No. 16 in the Riwaj -i -Am of the Faridkot State prepared during the Settlement operations held in 1946. The answer to that question is given in column No. 3 and runs as follows:

(3.) Shri Nehra urges that the limitation to challenge an invalid adoption under custom commences from the date of the knowledge of the claimant entitled to attack the adoption. No a date of knowledge was specified in the plaint and there Is no credible evidence that the collaterals of Mit Singh who were alive on the date of the adoption had not come to know of the adoption There is no evidence again as to when they came to know of it. In the presence of the specific allegation in the plaint that the cause of action had arisen on 26 -2 -1983, and in the absence of any proof that the collaterals of Mit Singh had not come to know of the adoption till within six years of the suit, the suit would be out of time as it was brought after 19 years of the adoption and the birth of the Plaintiff. If the Plaintiff in spite of his being an after -born son claimed a right to sue on the ground that the collaterals of the appointer competent to challenge the appointment of Hari Singh were in existence and had not ratified the adoption, he had to face the bar of limitation in that case also. If the suit by those reversioners had become time barred on account of the running of time from the date of the adoption as alleged in the plaint, and there is no material on the record suggesting that those reversioners had not come to know of the adoption from 26 -2 -1983, the Plaintiffs suit would also be barred as his subsequent birth and inability on account of minority could not stop the running of time that had once begun to run. In that view of the law the Plaintiff's suit is hopelessly time barred.