HIRALAL ICHHALAL Vs. NARSILAL CHATURBHUJDAS DESAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal from a judgment and decree dated 21st January 1909 of the High Court of Judicature of Bombay, which affirmed with a slight modification a judgment and decree of the Court of the District Judge of Broach, dated the 12th March 1906. The main question is whether the present suit is barred by the Indian Statutes of Limitation. The Courts below have held that it is not so barred, and from this decision the appellants (who were defendants in the suit) appeal.

(2.) The facts of the case so far as they are relevant to the present appeal are very simple. The mortgage in question was executed on the 4th November 1793. By that deed Desai Partabrai Mugatrai, the predecessor-in-title of the respondents, mortgaged with possession a certain desaigiri dastur and certain pasaeta lands situated in the district of Broach to the predecessor-in-title of the appellants. In 1803 the district of Broach finally came under British rule, and subsequently the desaigiri dastur in Broach was commuted into a fixed money allowance, payable from the Treasury. Since that settlement the appellants have received the- money allowance in lieu of the desaigiri dastur.

(3.) On the 16th October 1901 the plaintiffs instituted the present suit for redemption of the said mortgage. The appellants pleaded that the suit was barred by limitation under the Indian Statutes of Limitation, which provide a period of sixty years for a suit for redemption. Inasmuch as more than sixty years had elapsed since the execution of the original mortgage, this plea must have succeeded in the absence of written acknowledgments sufficient to satisfy the provisions of Section 19 of the Indian Limitation Act, 1877, but the plaintiffs contended that certain documents signed by the predecessors-in-title of the appellants, constituted such acknowledgments and gave to the plaintiffs new periods of limitation, which brought the suit within the prescribed period.