MALIREDDI AYYAREDDI Vs. GOPALAKRISHNAYYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) CERTAIN Indian landowners within the district of Masulipatam effected 1st, 2nd and 3rd mortgages on their property; the 1st and 3rd being on the lands alone, the 2nd on the crops also. They were afterwards sued to judgment by some creditors for ordinary debts, and their lands were sold in execution of the judgment but subject to the mortgages. The purchaser of the equity of redemption was one Pingala, who paid Rs. 1000, and thereout the judgment debt was satisfied.

(2.) THE second mortgagee then instituted his suit to enforce his mortgage, making the original mortgagors, the third mortgagee and Pingala defendants; and having obtained judgment, he from time to time obtained orders for sale of the crops. In one case it would seem as if the. crops were actually sold in execution; in others, Pingala, or the present respondents, who bought Pingala's interests during the course of the proceedings, paid the second mortgagee sums of money and saved the crops from seizure. While this was going on, the third mortgagee, who is the present appellant, brought a suit, making the original mortgagors and Pingala parties; and in this suit the lands were sold out and out, freed and discharged from the mortgages. After payment of the amount due to the first mortgagee and the expenses of the sale and so forth, there remained in Court to the credit of the cause a sum of Rs. 1327 with some annas and pies.

(3.) THE application of the respondents for the payment out of the money in Court was resisted by the appellant, who contended that when the owner of a property subject to several mortgages pays off a prior mortgage he is not entitled to stand in the shoes of the prior mortgagee, but is to be taken as clearing the property from prior incumbrances for the benefit of the later mortgagee.