ABUL NASAR RASHIDUDDIN AHMAD KHAN Vs. LALTA PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in revision which arises out of a somewhat complicated state of facts. If our order is not to be misinterpreted and misapplied hereafter as deciding something which we have no intention of deciding, it seems advisable that we should state the essential facts in some detail. In the year 1920 two decrees were obtained in two different suits in the Court of the Munsif of Moradabad. One decree, passed on the 15 of April 1920, was in Suit No. 175 of 1920, and was in favour of Ram Prakash against Rashiduddin. The other decree passed on the 4 of August 1920 was in Suit No. 298 of 1920, in favour of Babu Bam against Muhammad Shafi and Rashiduddin. Execution was first taken out in the latter of these two decrees, but apparently the attempts of Babu Ram as decree-holder were directed in the first instance against the property of Muhammad Shafi and were unsuccessful. At any rate, on the 26 of October 1920. Ram Prakash, having taken out execution of his decree in Suit No. 175 if 1920, succeeded in attaching immoveable property belonging to his judgment- debtor Rashiduddin. Thereupon on the 18 December 1920 Babu Ram applied for rateable distribution as against the assets of Rashiduddin of any money which might be realised upon the application of Ram Prakash. The property of Rashiduddin thus attached was put up for sale more than once, but no sale actually took place on the first two or three occasions, because the Court in charge of the execution proceedings refused to accept any of the bids offered. After several of these ineffectual attempts the property under attachment was ordered to be sold on the 20 of June 1921, and a sale proclamation was issued for that date.

(2.) In the meantime several things had happened. First of all, Rashiduddin paid off in full the decree of Ram Prakash, and satisfaction of that decree was entered on the 15 of February 1921 under the orders of the Court. The Execution Court nevertheless ordered that the sale of the attached property should proceed in consequence of Babu Ram's application for a rateable distribution, until Babu Ram's decree was also satisfied. We are not concerned to consider whether this was a strictly regular method of procedure, or whether, in his own interests, it would not have been better for Babu Ram, as soon as the decree of Ram Prakash was satisfied, to have asked the Court frontally to re-attach the property in execution of his own decree. The practical result, however, was that in the sale proclamation by which the property was advertised for sale on the 20 of June 1921 the amount for the recovery of which the sale was ordered was wrongly stated. Obviously, the sale was being ordered for the satisfaction of Babu Ram's decree for which by that time a sum of Rs. 567-6-6 was required. In the sale proclamation, however, the amount entered was only Rs. 300-9 6, being the amount of the decree originally passed in favour of Ram Prakash.

(3.) Another important event which had occurred before the 20 of June. 1921 was that Rashiduddin, having in the meantime appealed against Babu Rani's decree in Suit No. 298 of 1920, presented an application to the Appellate Court for stay of execution. That Court, whether rightly or wrongly, granted this application for's ay. It did not merely pass an order in general terms directing execution proceedings in respect of the decree obtained by Babu Ram in Suit No. 298 of 1920 to be stayed, but it sent down to the Execution Court a specific order directing the auction sale to be postponed. That order could only refer to the sale which was about to be held under the orders of the Execution Court for the satisfaction of Babu Ram's decree. Nevertheless, the learned Munsif. with this order before him flatly refused to issue orders for the postponement of the sale. He gave certain reasons for doing so. He seemed to think that the judgment- debtor was in some way to blame for the fact that the execution of Babu Ram's decree obtained in Suit No. 298 of 1920 was still proceeding upon an attachment which had been effected in the course of the execution of Ram Prakash's decree in Suit No. 175 of 1920. Throwing the, blame of this fact upon the judgment-debtor, the learned Munsif held that the stay order which he had received was not an order directing him to do what he perfectly well knew that it did direct him to do, namely, to stay the sale of Rashiduddin's property which was about to be held on the 20 of June 1921 for the satisfaction of Babu Ram's decree. Accordingly, the sale actually took place on that date and the property was finally knocked down to an auction-purchaser who bid a sum of Rs. 1,000.