CHARLES S BROWN Vs. ALBERT DONOUGH HANSON

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The point we have to decide is, in the first place, whether this revision application is one which can properly be made to this Court, and, secondly, whether the lower Court's order, which was one made in execution proceedings and holding that the pay of a First Class Warrant Officer to whom the Army Act applies is not attachable under a decree of the civil Court to the extent contained in Section 60 (1) (i) of the Civil Procedure Code, is correct or not.

(2.) Mr. Brown, the decree-holder, had a decree against the judgment-debtor for Rs. 4,680 and costs. He applied in execution of this decree, seeking to have a moiety of the defendant's pay attached by the issue of an order under Order XXI, Rule 48, of the Civil Procedure Code. An order accordingly issued and went apparently to the Controller of Military Accounts, Rawalpindi. That officer, in the first instance, sent a cheque for Rs. 236-1-0, but protested that the judgment-debtor's salary was not attachable in this way. There was some correspondence between the learned Subordinate Judge and the Military Authorities, in the course of which arguments were advanced on either side, and in the end, the learned Government Pleader, Poona, was instructed to appear for the judgment-debtor through the Military Authorities. The learned Subordinate Judge held that the judgment-debtor's pay was not attachable in the manner which had been had recourse to, and dismissed the application for execution, raised the attachment and directed the the plaintiff to refund to the applicant, or to deposit in Court, the amounts of Rs. 236-1-0 and Rs. 247-1-0 which had been, as he held, wrongly paid to him, within a week from that date, and also ordered that a further amount of Rs. 507-2-0 lying in Court should be returned to the judgment-debtor. The decree- holder was ordered to pay the latter's costs and to bear his own.

(3.) We have had two arguments addressed to us, and the first was on the question of whether this order of the learned Subordinate Judge is one that we can revise or not. It has been urged that there is an error of jurisdiction in that the learned Subordinate Judge was not competent to revise his order attaching the judgment-debtor's pay, and that he committed a material irregularity in allowing an unauthorized person to appear and contest the judgment- debtor's claim.