CHAND AHMEDALLI Vs. RAVJI TANAJI MALI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against the appellate decree of the District Judge of Nasik setting aside the decree of the Joint Subordinate Judge at Malegaon in Regular Civil Suit No. 14 of 1928.

(2.) The plaintiff's case is that he purchased fifteen lands from one Kurban Alii In 1898 and the remaining two from Tanaji, the father of defendants Nos. 1 and 2, in 1915, that these lands were taken on lease by Tanaji, who passed a rent-note in 1924, agreeing thereby to vacate them nine months later, and that out of the seventeen lands nine were still in the possession of the defendants ; he, therefore, sued the defendants to recover possession of those nine lands. The case for the defendants was that the lands were originally their ancestral property, that they were ostensibly sold first to Kurban Alii and then to the plaintiff, that the transactions were really in the nature of mortgages, that the rent-notes were passed for sums which represented the interest due on the latter mortgage, and that in 1925 there was a settlement whereby the defendants were allowed to remain as the owners of one-half of the lands in question and the plaintiff took possession of the remaining half. The learned Subordinate Judge held against the defendants on the material issues and decreed the plaintiff's claim. On appeal, the learned District Judge set aside the order of the lower Court on the ground that the defendants had made out that there had been a settlement as alleged by them, though they had failed to prove that the plaintiff had obtained lands merely as a mortgagee.

(3.) In this case the only two material points raised by the defendants are that the transactions evidenced by exhibits 47 and 48, the sale-deeds of the years 1898 and 1915, were in the nature of mortgages, and, secondly, that there was a settlement between the parties, as alleged, in 1925.