GULZARI LAL Vs. COLLECTOR OF ETAH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decree of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, dated 17 December 1926, varying preliminary and final decrees of the Court of the District Judge of Aligarh. Those three decrees were passed in a suit for the administration of what was alleged, and what each Court has found to be a trust for public purposes of a charitable nature. The appellant and his co-defendant, Kesri Chand, were the surviving trustees of the trust, and in the suit a claim was made against the appellant for Rs. 1,33,000 of its funds, said to have been misappropriated by him. The plaintiff also sought to have the appellant removed from his position as trustee and to have a scheme promulgated for the future administration of the trust. The preliminary decree of the District Court directed the appellant to be so removed. It ordered him to account for the trust property which had come into his hands. It propounded a scheme for the future administration of the trust and ordered the appellant to pay the respondent's entire costs of suit. The District Court, after accounts had been taken, found Rs. 62,573-15-4 to be due from the appellant; and it so decreed.

(2.) By the decree of the High Court of 17 December 1920, the decrees of the District Court were affirmed so far as the removal of the appellant from his trust and the promulgation of a scheme were concerned. But the sum of Rs. 63,573-15-4 which had been found to be due from him on his accounts was reduced to Rs. 17,766 and the greater part of the costs of the respondent, the plaintiff in the suit, was, in relief of the appellant, charged upon the trust property. The appellant complains of this decree, relatively trifling although his liability thereunder is, when contrasted with the claim originally made upon him. He says he is free from all liability and he asks that the suit as against him should be dismissed.

(3.) The property in question formed part of the estate of one Panni Lal, a self-made man, who died in 1879. In 1877 he had by deed of gift made over the whole of his means to his wife, Mt. Chunni Kuer. On his death two years later there were four claimants to his estate: Mt. Chunni Kuer, now his widow, his deceased brother's son Ganga Prasad, his nephew Dwarka Prasad, and the appellant Gulzari Lal, then a minor of nine years of age who, through his guardian, claimed to be an adopted son of a deceased son of Panni Lal.