SRI VADREVU VISWASUNDRA ROW Vs. RYALI SOMASUNDARA RAO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question in this case is generally whether second defendant is the adopted son of the late Zamindar of Vegayammapeta. Plaintiff originally denied that any adoption ceremony had been performed, but he abandoned that position at the trial. There and here he has pressed only four objections two to the consent of the kinsmen, which in the absence of authority from her deceased husband, first defendant, the widow, required to enable her to make a valid adoption, and two to the capacity of second defendant to be adopted. I deal with them in order.

(2.) Of the kinsmen two, Bhimasankara Bow and Suryaprakasa Row, died during the trial. Neither informed the first defendant of his reason for not consenting to the adoption--vide Venkatakrishnamma v. Annapurnamma (1900) I.L.R., 23 Mad., 486. The former in fact did not refuse his consent explicitly. Fart of the lower Court s judgment is occupied with their failure to consent. But nothing has been said regarding it by plaintiff in this Court and I therefore turn at once to his attack on the four kinsmen who consented.

(3.) The allegation is, first, that the consents of these four were obtained by corrupt means. Defendants before the trial naturally asked for particulars, but the lower Court in its order, Exhibit CXLII, did not insist on them on account of the delay in making the request, which may have been correct, although it also gave the remarkable reason that, plaintiff having stated that the corruption was by payments of money, defendants were entitled to nothing more and could not expect plaintiff to disclose his evidence. In fact, plaintiff in Exhibit CXLII (b) had said that he could not give any particulars of the money payments alleged, until he had inspected the defendants accounts; and his case must therefore start under the strongest suspicion that the detailed story he attempted to prove was invented for the trial,