VISALAKSHI AMMAL Vs. DORASINGA PILLAI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The contentions argued in this appeal are (a) that the learned Judge below ought to have held that the statements in the mortgage-deed Exhibit I, about one of the properties having been purchased by Rangammal and the other property by Sundar Grainmani, Bangammal and their sons were unreliable (7th ground of the appeal memorandam): (b) that the learned Judge did not give due might to the legal presumption that properties in the name of one of two dancing-girl sisters are the common property of both and (c) that he did not give sufficient weight to the oral evidence on the plaintiff s side.

(2.) I think that the statements in the mortgage-deed, Exhibit I, which are admissible in evidence under Section 32, Clause 7, read with Section 13 of the Evidence Act (Rangammal being dead) were rightly treated as reliable by the learned Judge, as they are corroborated by the oral evidence of the defendants side showing that Bangammal and her sons solely received the rents of one of the properties and by the evidence of one of the witnesses on plaintiff s side, who says that the Grammani who kept Rangammal for several years was a rich man. As regards the legal presumption, though these dancing girls have been held to be governed by the Hindu Law relating to co-parcenary, as if there were made members of a Hindu co-parcenary, the analogy should not, in my opinion, be pushed too far as we know that from the nature of their profession, it could not be expected that sisters would ordinarily live together long and club their separate earnings or that their property would usually consist of what they got ancestrally (from their female ancestors) with the addition made by the natural increase of those properties through the receipt of interest on investment or receipt of mesne profits.

(3.) I am not prepared to dissent from the learned Judge s appreciation of the oral evidence, on the plaintiff s side having regard to the probabilities of the case.