MST. KIRPO AND ORS. Vs. BAKHTAWAR SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS second appeal is directed against the concurrent decisions of the Courts below decreeing the Plaintiff's suit. This appeal has arisen in the following circumstances.

(2.) SMT . Kirpo, who is the principal Defendant, was married to Sawan Singh some time in 1924. Sawan Singh died during the life time of his father Bhagwan Singh. On Bhagwan Singh's death, Smt. Kirpo succeeded to his estate as his son's widow. She married one Bakhtawar Singh in the year 1925 and In the year 1927, Blshan Singh, who is the fourth degree collateral of Bhagwan Singh both being the descendants of Dhanna Singh, brought a suit for declaration that he was in possession of Bhagwan Singh's property and was entitled to retain it as the next heir because by remarriage Smt. Kirpo had forfeited her right to Bhagwan Singh's estate. Whether this plea would have succeeded or not, if the litigation had reached its logical conclusion, is a different matter. The fact remains that this suit was compromised on the 23rd November, 1928 By this compromise the estate was left mm Smt. Kirpo for life and it was specifically prowled (hat she could not alienate the same in any manner.

(3.) IT is common ground that Smt. Kirpo remarried, after the death of her husband, the husband's collateral Bakhtawar Singh. On her remarriage, a dispute arose as to whether she had forfeited the right to the property she had acquired from her husband by reason of the remarriage. That dispute was compromised and it seems to have been assumed that she had forfeited her estate. By the compromise she was allowed to retain possession of the property on the conditions specified in the compromise. In this situation and in the peculiar circumstances of this case, it must be held that she acquired the property in the year 1928 under the compromise. If there was no forfeiture of her estate by reason of the remarriage, she would not have centered into the compromise, because oven before the compromise she was holding the estate on the same terms and conditions under which she was to hold it after the compromise. Therefore the very basis on which the argument proceeds is knocked off in this case, the basis being that there is no acquisition of the property by the widow under the compromise.