RAMCHANDRA Vs. RAM LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is connected in a sense with First Appeal No. 164 of 1938. First Appeal No. 38 of 1937 was filed in this Court against the decision of the Civil Judge of Fatehgarh dated 17 November 1936. Appeal No. 164 of 1938 was filed in the Court of the District Judge of Farrukhabad against the same decision of the Civil Judge. Presumably, the appellants were in doubt as to whether the appeal lay to this Court or to the Court of the District Judge and that is why they filed two appeals, but later they moved this Court that the appeal pending in the Court of the District Judge be transferred to this Court and be connected with the first appeal pending in this Court. This prayer was granted and that is why we have two first appeals before us, but both of them, as we said before, are against the same decision. One judgment therefore will govern both the first appeals; as a matter of fact, there is necessity of delivering only one judgment in the appeal pending in this Court, the other appeal will require under the circumstances of the case no order whatsoever. The appeal before us is by two persons Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra who are described as garnishees and the respondents are Ram Lal and Nathu Lal who are described as decree-holders. On 31 January 1927 Rohan Lal and his son Ram Lal obtained a simple money decree against Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal. This decree was put into execution on 5 March 1927 against the judgment-debtors, and on 11 February 1928 execution was transferred to the Collector under Section 68, Civil P.C., because the proceedings were aimed against the ancestral property of the judgment-debtors. The zamindari property was attached.

(2.) On 29 April 1929 Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal sold the attached zamindari property to Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra for a sum of Rs. 8600 and, out of this sum, Rs. 4400 odd were left in the hands of Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra vendees for payment to the decree-holders of Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal, namely Rohan Lal and Ram Lal. This sale deed was attested by Ram Lal and we shall not be far wrong in assuming that Ram Lal the decree-holder was a consenting party to the sale because he thought that the vendees would satisfy the decretal amount. The execution case before the Collector was struck off on 27 June 1929. There was another infructuous application of 19 March 1932 and after that there was another application of 15 May 1933 where proceedings were aimed against Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra, the purchasers of the zamindari property belonging to Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal. The prayer of the decree-holders was that the decretal amount should be realized by the arrest of Ram Chandra. Nothing was said about Ramesh Chandra because he was a minor. On 17 May 1933 Ram Chandra was brought before Court under arrest and then he made several objections to the application of Rohan Lal and Ram Lal, the decree-holders. These objections were upheld by the Civil Judge on 22nd September 1933. There was an appeal by the decree-holder and the learned District Judge agreed with the Court below on the validity of the objections raised by Ram Chandra, but he was of the opinion that the proper proceedings that ought to have been taken by the decree-holders were garnishee proceedings as contemplated by Order 21, Rule 131 and subsequent Rules of the Civil Procedure Code and not by means of a direct attempt to arrest Ram Chandra. He, therefore, remanded the case to the trial Court with the direction "that garnishee proceedings may be started against Ram Chandra."

(3.) We now come to the application of 29 September 1936-the application which has given rise to the present appeal. By this time Rohan Lal had died and his second son Nathu Lal was brought on the record as a decree-holder. Ram Lal and Nathu Lal respondents before us moved the Court of the Civil Judge to issue a notice to Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra under Order 21, Rule 131, Civil P.C., calling upon them to appear before the Court and show cause why they should not pay the debt due from them to Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal in Court so that the amount may be paid to Ram Lal and Nathu Lal and thus their decree against Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal may be satisfied. When the Court below issued such a notice and when Ram Chandra and Ramesh Chandra appeared in Court to show cause, they said that no debt was due by them to Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal, and if there was a debt it was secured by a charge and was outside the scope of Order 21, Rule 131. They further said that they were not personally liable and the debt, if any, due to Gulzari Lal and Gendan Lal was barred by time. The minor Ramesh Chandra raised a further plea that he was a minor at the time of the sale deed of 29 April 1929 and therefore no liability under the contract of sale could be enforced against him in any shape or form.