GULABSINGH Vs. RAJA SETH GOKULDAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a decree, dated the 7th May 1907, of the Judicial Commissioner of the Central Provinces which affirmed with slight modifications a decree, dated the 4th April 1906, of the District Judge of Hoshangabad.

(2.) The suit in which the appeal arose was brought on the 22nd September 1904 in the Court of the District Judge of Hoshangabad by mortgagees upon a mortgage of immovable property which was made on the 10th December 1891 by the Deputy Commissioner of the district of Hoshangabad as and being the Court of Wards for that district. The suit was one for possession of the mortgaged property including the sir lands, or alternatively for a decree for sale. Certain other alternative reliefs were claimed.

(3.) The defences to the suit, so far as they are now material, were that the mortgage had, it was alleged, been made by the Deputy Commissioner without the previous sanction of the Chief Commissioner and was void; that the property mortgaged was the undivided ancestral property of a joint Hindu family under the rules of the Mitakshara, and that the Court of Wards had no right or authority to mortgage the shares, rights, or interests of those members of the family who were not Government wards or who were minors; and that no decree for sale, or for possession, or for any of the alternative reliefs could be made.