MADAN MOHAN Vs. BALKISHAN DAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal arises out of a suit by a father against his son concerning certain items of joint family property of which of course the father is the karta. The relations between the father and the son got strained largely because the father, Shri Bal Kishan Das, had after the death of his first wife, who was the mother of the defendant Madan Mohan, remarried and has had children from the second wife. The father, being the plaintiff, alleged that an area of agricultural land belonging to the joint family was handed over by him in 1954 to the defendant Madan Mohan for managing it as he himself was not too well just then, but that the defendant Madan Mohan had subsequently refused to render accounts of the income derived from the agricultural land. The plaintiff, therefore, claimed a decree for accounts. Further, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant was trying to interfere with another joint family property, being a business called the East Punjab Book Depot. The plaintiff also alleged that there was another property belonging to the Joint family at Rai Bahadur Kalyan Singh Road in Amritsar with which the defendant was unlawfully interfering. The plaintiff, therefore, prayed that apart from a decree for accounts, an injunction should be issued against the defendant restraining him from interfering with the two properties.

(2.) THE defendant Madan Mohan, admitted that the agricultural land in question was joint family property but he claimed that the property had been given to him by his father not for merely managing it for the time being but for his, that is, the defendant's maintenance. His case was that because of strained relations between the parties the father had thought it fit to make over the agricultural land to the defendant in lieu of maintenance and the claim for accounts, therefore, was ill founded.

(3.) THE trial Court found on the evidence that the East Punjab Book Depot was the exclusive property of the defendant and the plaintiff's claim in respect of it was unsustainable. Regarding Kalyan Singh Road Property the Court found that the defendant was in occupation of only two rooms and that, as he was entitled to remain in occupation, he could not be dispossessed There remained the question of agricultural land 276 Kanals 7 Marias in area in Rakh Shikargah. The Court found on the evidence that property belonged to the joint family, as was of course admitted, and further that it was made over to the defendant by his father merely for management and the defendant's story, that it had been given to him in lieu of his maintenance, was not true. The Court, therefore, held that the defendant was liable to render accounts concerning the income of that property to his father who was the Karta of the family. In the result, the trial Court granted the plaintiff a preliminary decree for accounts concerning the income from the agricultural land aid also granted a permanent injunction to the plaintiff restraining the defendant from interfering in the management or possession of the remaining joint family properties, the injunction being in terms "a permanent injunction restraining the defendant from interfering in the possession and management of the joint Hindu family properties, namely, the land and the property situated at Kalyan Singh Road, Amritsar." The suit regarding the East Punjab Book Depot at Amritsar and certain other movable properties was dismissed and the parties were left to their own costs. Against that decree the defendant has filed the present appeal (Regular First Appeal 423 of 1938) and although at one stage cross -objections were filed on behalf of the plaintiff concerning the part of the claim which was dismissed by the trial Court, those cross -objections appear to have been later withdrawn and we are no longer concerned with them.