LAKSHMAN DADA NAIK Vs. RAMCHANDRA DADA NAIK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Appellant in this case is the second, and the Respondent the eldest, son of one Dada Mahadev Naik, who died on the 13th of July, 1872. Dada Mahadev Naik was a son of Mahadev Narayan Naik, who died in 1847, leaving another and eldest son called Hurba, and seven grandsons, four of whom were sons of predeceased sons, and three, namely, the Respondent, the Appellant, and a younger son, Keshav, were the sons of Dada Naik. All these persons after the death of Narayan Naik constituted a joint and undivided Hindu family, of which Dada Naik, his eldest brother Hurba being dumb, and therefore incapacitated, became the manager. By virtue, however, of subsequent partitions and other family arrangements the other members of the larger family became separate from Dada Naik and his three sons, who in the year 1857 were the only members of the joint and undivided family with which their Lordships have to deal.

(2.) THE family property consisted of a family house at Shahapoor, in the Southern Maratha country, and of an ancestral business which was carried on partly there, and partly in a kotee at Bombay, which appears to have been managed by Gromashtas. About the year 1858 great dissensions arose between the Respondent and his father, the former claiming a right to take a larger share of the management of the business than his father was disposed to allow him. It is unnecessary to enter into the particulars of these disputes, but the result of them was that in 1858 the father and his two younger sons left the family house, the Respondent remaining there; and afterwards they, in the year 1864, built for themselves with the family funds another house at Belgaum.

(3.) IN 1868 Keshav Naik, the youngest son, formally separated himself from the joint family, taking Rs. 45,000 odd as his share in the joint estate, or the balance of it. The deed of release executed by him on the 16th of November of that year is in the Record, and it may be observed that it treats the old family house at Shahapoor as still part of the joint family estate.