HARNAM DAS Vs. FAIYAZI BEGAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question we have to decide in this second appeal is whether an allowance of Rs. 60 payable every six months to the first defendant respondent, Musammat Faiyazi Begam, is capable of assignment. The allowance has been hypothecated twice to the plaintiff appellant, Harnam Das, under two deeds of the 18 of June, 1 906, and the 23 of April, 1907, respectively. The first of these deeds was executed by the lady alone; the second by herself, her husband and her son.

(2.) The claim was for Rs. 1 418-5-0 and the plaintiff mortgagee asked for a decree enabling him to recover the debt by sale of the hypothecated property. Admittedly the question before us has to be decided with reference to the language of Secs.11 and 12 of the Pensions Act (Act XXIII of 1871).

(3.) Section 11 lays down that no pension granted or continued by Government on political considerations, or on account of past services or present infirmities or as a compassionate allowance is liable to seizure, attachment or sequestration by process of any court in British India, at the instance of a creditor, for any demand against the pensioner, or in satisfaction of a decree or order of any such court. And Section 12 enacts that assignments of pensions mentioned in Section 11 are null and void.