RAJKUMAR SEN CHOUDHURY Vs. RAM SUNDAR SHAHA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Disputes about the dispositions and contracts of people of advanced age and failing powers are always difficult cases to decide, and the difficulty is greatly increased when, as in the present case, the record has swollen to enormous size owing to the way in which the examination of the witnesses on commission was protracted, assuredly not in the interests of the parties. A scandalous instance of this abuse is to be found, as observed by the learned Judges of the High Court, in the examination of Ananda Roy, the principal witness for the plaintiffs, which takes up two hundred and twenty-six pages of the record, and contains twelve hundred and fifty questions and answers, most of which, as admitted at the trial by the vakils on both sides, were quite irrelevant to the suit.

(2.) In another appeal with an enormous record from the same High Court it was recently stated that the cross-examination on commission of a pardahnashin lady lasted for a hundred days. In their Lordships' opinion it is imperative that an abuse of this kind, which enormously increases the costs of litigation without any corresponding benefit to the parties, should be checked, and it would appear to be clearly within the powers of the High Courts to direct an inquiry with a view to disciplinary action in flagrant cases which come under their notice at the hearing of appeals.

(3.) The question in the present case is whether the plaintiffs are entitled to obtain specific performance of a registered bainapatra or agreement to sell the suit properties executed by Kali Narayan, the father of defendants 1 to 4, who have been brought on after his death with his other descendants in the male line as his legal representatives, and the main defence is that he was then of unsound mind for the purpose of making a contract, within the meaning of S.12, Contract Act, as being, at the time he made it, "incapable of understanding it and of forming a rational judgment as to its effect upon his interests."