GOPAL LAL SETT Vs. PURNA CHANDRA BASAK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The history of the litigation of which these appeals form part, extending over a period of sixty-five years, has been carefully and minutely examined in the judgment of the learned Judges of the High Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, from which these appeals have been brought. Their Lordships therefore do not propose to attempt a repetition of the facts, except so far only as may bo necessary to explain the reasons for the opinion they have formed.

(2.) Several questions of interest and of importance have indeed been raised and argued upon these appeals, but the true construction of the will of the testatrix, Bhaggobati Dasi, lies at the threshold of the dispute, and on the view taken by their Lordships of the true meaning of this document these larger questions do not arise.

(3.) The testatrix, who died on May 29, 1841, was the second wife, and at her death had been for thirty years the widow, of one Gobind Chand Basak, a Hindu governed by the Bengal school of Hindu law. By him she had had three sons and two daughters. The eldest of these sons was Pran Krishna Basak, who predeceased his mother and left two children, Monmohini, Dasi and Udoy Chand Basak. The second son, Joy Krishna, was found to be a person of unsound mind in 1838, but he was not a congenital lunatic. The third son Raj Krishna, died in 1821, leaving no children. The eldest daughter, Tripura Sundari Dasi, died before her mother, leaving a son, Radha Kanta, and the second, Golap Dasi, or. as she is sometimes called, Golapmoni survived. By the first marriage of Gobind Chand Basak there had been two sons, Radha Krishna Basak and Sri Krishna Basak, both of whom survived the widow, from them there have been numerous descendants, who will be referred to merely by way of description as the Basak Branch of the family. In truth the real quarrel in the present case lies between the two branches of the same family descending from the two wives. Bhaggobati's will was executed on the day of her death. Some question has arisen as to the true translation of the will. The differences do not seem vital, but in any case their Lordships accept the official translation Ex. A in the suit No. 711 of 1907. It is addressed to Udoy Chand Basak, her grandson, and contains on the face of it the following statement :-