RAMCHANDRA PARIDA Vs. NARAYAN DAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The amount due to the decree-holders, who are the appellants here, under their decree was Rs. 364. On 27 February 1941, the judgment-debtor put in a petition, stating that an agreement had been come to between the decree-holders and himself, under which the former were to accept a sum of Rs. 100 in full satisfaction of their claim. Further, according to the judgment-debtor, Rs. 75 out of this was to be paid not at once but in three quarterly instalments of Rs. 25 each. No kind of writing by the decree-holders in support of this alleged agreement was put in.

(2.) Ultimately, on 12 May 1941, the learned Munsif made an ex parte order, recording the adjustment. Order 21, Rule 2, Civil P.C., requires that when a judgment-debtor informs the Court of any payment or adjustment under a decree, the Court shall issue notice to the decree-holder. The form of the notice is to be found in App. E of Schedule 1 to the Code. Now, no notice in this form was ever issued to the decree-holders in this particular case. The learned Munsif had, on 27 February 1941, made an order "inform the decree-holders" but his office, instead of issuing notice in the prescribed form, merely sent the order-sheet to their pleader.

(3.) At least there is an endorsement in the margin of the order-sheet "Jadu Babu" and, underneath it, certain initials which Mr. Chatterji, who appears for the appellants, tells me are the initials of a pleader of this name who appeared for his clients in the execution proceedings. If the order-sheet was shown to this pleader, as it may well have been, at a time when he was engaged in some Court, and he put his initials on it in order to get rid of the peon who brought it to him, it is not surprising that the decree-holders never came to know of this application.