SUNITABALA DEBI Vs. MANINDRA CHANDRA ROY CHOWDHURY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal will, it is to be hoped, bring to its close a prolonged litigation between near relatives, carried on at enormous expense for nearly twenty-seven years, that is to say, since shortly after the month of November, 1903, when one Sarat Chandra Boy Chowdhury died leaving him surviving the appellant, his daughter by a predeceased wife, and two widows, of one of whom the respondents, cousins of the appellants, are the successors in interest.

(2.) The litigation has been concerned with the property of Sarat Chandra Roy. His widows propounded a will in their favour, alleged to have been executed by the deceased on the day of his death. Their application for probate of that will was opposed by the appellant, who claimed to have succeeded to her father's property under an earlier will of his, dated September 21, 1892. The District Judge to whom the widows application was made rejected as a forgery the will they put forward, and refused to admit it to probate. The widows appealed to the High Court of Judicature at Fort William, whereupon the Administrator-General of Bengal, as executor of the earlier will of 1892, sought to prove it in the same High Court, The widows entered a caveat to. this proceeding. The result was a compromise, of which the present suit is the outcome. Commenced so long ago as March 22, 1909, it has proceeded ever since for one purpose or another, and with many re-arrangements of parties in its course. Of the diverse questions which in its different stages have been raised, some of substance, but as many of mere form, all have now been disposed of save that which is the subject of the present appeal.

(3.) As a result of the judgment of the Boa May, 30, 1919 See Sunitibala Debi V/s. Dhara Sundari Debt Chowdhurani (1919) I.L.R. 47 Cal. 175, s.c. 22 Bom. L.R. 1, p.c., the suit when it finally came on for trial before the learned Subordinate Judge of Rangpur had become in his words, " one for the entire mortgage money by the assignees of the entire body of mortgagees who pray for the sale of the entire mortgaged properties." Since then, a compromise with the assignees of one of the mortgages has been reached. But by the respondents the assignees of the other the suit has been waged relentlessly against the appellant, who, under the greatest financial stress, and ultimately only by the special leave of His Majesty in Council, has been enabled to bring before the Board the, to her, vital question with which their Lordships are now required to deal.