MANRAJ Vs. RAMESHWAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE property in respect of which the controversy in this case has arisen admittedly belonged to Binja who died some time in Samwat 1959, leaving behind his widow Smt. Amri. Smt. Ram Kanwari (defendant No. 3) is their daughter. THEre is a dispute whether she was first married to Kheta and defen-dant Manraj wa|s born of that union and then went in "nata" to Kheta's brother Hema, after his death,or whether she was married to Hema from the very beginning. But it is not in dispute that Manraj (defendant No. 1), Magna, Chuna & Hanuman are her four sons. Smt. Bhani (defendant No. 2) is the daughter of Manraj who had no other surviving issue, and plaintiff Rameshwar is the natural son of Magna.

(2.) PLAINTIFF Rameshwar raised the suit on November 30, 1956, with allegation that after the death of his wife and son, Hemraj took him in adoption on Phalgun Sud 2, S. 2001, executed a document (Ex. 1) to that effect and kept him as his son. He claimed that he lived jointly with Manraj as his adopted son and helped him in cultivation. According to the plaintiff, Binja had no son and so his widow Smt. Amri kept her daughter Ram Kanwari with her and after her death Ram Kanwari became the owner of her property. Manraj was the "karta" of his family but, according to the plaintiff, he colluded with the other defendants in order to deprive him of the property, and executed a registered gift deed (Ex. 20) of the property in favour of his daughter Smt. Bhani on October 19, 1956. He told the plaintiff that he did not want to keep him in adoption. The plaintiff therefore felt aggrieved because, according to the averment in the plaint, the property was the ancestral property of his grand-mother Ram Kanwari and her husband Hema and could not be gifted. As the gift deed cast a cloud on his right to the property, the plaintiff raised the suit for a declaration that he was the adopted son of Manraj defendant No. 1. He also prayed for the cancellation of the gift deed as it was void and inoperative against him.

(3.) IN these facts and circumstances, it will be fair and reasonable to take the view, on a bare perusal of gift-deed Ex. 22, that both agricultural and non-agricultural properties were gifted by Manraj to his daughter Smt. Bhani, and it is not disputed that a suit relating to such composite properties would be triable by a civil court. It has been held by this court in Rattu vs. Mula (6) that this is so, and I am in respectful agreement with that view. As has been observed by their Lordships of the Supreme Court in Dhulabhai vs. State of MP. (7), the exclusion of jurisdiction of the civil court is not readily to be inferred, and there is, for reasons already stated, all the more reason for me not to draw such an inference. It has also to be remembered that in this case the relief claimed by the plaintiff that he may be declared to be the adopted son of defendant Manraj is not an ancillary matter for the decision of any main relief. It was of the essence of the suit, for the only other relief which plaintiff asked was based on it and was to follow as a necessary consequence once he was held to be Manraj's adopted son. I have therefore no hesitation in rejecting the belated effort on the part of the learned counsel for the defendant-appellants to make the submission that they should be allowed to raise the bar of sec. 207 of the Rajasthan Tenancy Act against the maintainability of the present suit in the civil court.