KRISHNA DAS ROY Vs. CHARULATA PAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In my opinion, this appeal must be allowed. The debtor has raised a contention which I should think requires some considerable investigation as to whether he has really been within six months prior to the presentation of the petition a resident within the jurisdiction of the Court. Assuming however that he has been and that there is no difficulty on that score, I find that this petition alleges three acts of insolvency. One is a verbal notice of suspension of payment of debts--on a date which is not given at all. The second is keeping house and concealing himself to avoid meeting his creditors, no date is given; and the last is that he has disposed of a considerable portion of his properties and is trying to dispose of the rest. As regards the second part, I do not quite know whether that is supposed to be an act of insolvency; but as regards the first part, there is no indication of the date and there is no indication of what property or to whom. The proper thing to do on this petition was to immediately insist on its amendment or else to throw it out altogether. It appears that an order for adjudication has been made in which these three acts of insolvency are found and they are recited without any date being given or any particulars being given. I can only say that that is entirely wrong. In an adjudication order the exact acts of insolvency together with the dates should be carefully particularized. It seems to me that it is impossible to allow the petition which was presented on 3 May 1930 to be kept hanging over the man's head when as a matter of fact it was a mere shell of a petition from the beginning and contained no substantial details. In my opinion, the proper order to make is to allow the appeal and set aside the order of adjudication altogether. The creditors, if they want to take steps against this debtor can begin all over again. There must be costs both before the learned Judge and in this Court against the petitioning creditor.

(2.) I should like to add that no attention seems to have been paid to the Insolvency Rules or procedure, particularly as regards the notice which was given to the debtor under Rule 79 and as regards the questions that are dealt with in Rules 79 to 83. I should much like to see these rules attended to on the original side. Buckland, J.

(3.) I agree.