MOHAMMAD ABDUL GHANI KHAN Vs. FAKHR JAHAN BEGAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are consolidated appeals by the plaintiffs from two decrees, dated December 19, 1917, of the Court of the Judicial Commissioner of Oudh, which reversed the decree, dated July 13, 1915, of the Subordinate Judge of Kheri, and dismissed the suit.

(2.) The suit was brought on February 20, 1914, in the Court of the Subordinate Judge by Mohammad Abdul Ghani Khan and Mohammad Abdul Rahman Khan against Mohammad Hamid Ullah Khan, Musammat Fakhr Jahan Begam, Musammat Asghari Begam, Musammat Chand Bibi and Pandit Sheo Dayal, for the possession of Mauza Mundia Misir, a four annas five pies share in Mauza Gundhia, and two groves, a house and certain sir land in Jalalpur, and for mesne profits. It was a suit of ejectment on title. The plaintiffs alleged that the right to possession of all the properties in suit was in them as the heirs of Musammat Munni Bibi, who had died on the June 16, 1906, and that the defendants had no title. The defendants, who are the respondents, were not all jointly interested in any of the properties. Some of the defendants were in possession of some of the properties, others of the defendants were in possession of other parts of the properties in suit, but the different titles of all the defendants originated in a document of March 7, 1884, which was executed by Munni Bibi, and has been variously construed as a deed of gift and as a will.

(3.) Munni Bibi was the widow of Niamat Ullah Khan, who died childless on August 29, 1867. Niamat Ullah Khan, Munni Bibi and the plaintiffs, who were her first cousins, were Mohammedans of the Sunni sect, and the plaintiffs were, when Munni Bibi died in 1906, her heirs, according to the Mahomedan law applicable to Sunnis. The family to which these Mahomedans belonged had, several centuries ago, been Thakurs professing the Hindu religion, who were converted to Islam, and at one period of this suit it was contended by the defendants, or some of them, that the family had always continued to be governed in matters of succession and inheritance by the rules of the Mitakshara and not by the Mahomedan law. That contention has been abandoned.