(VYTLA) SITANNA Vs. MARIVADA VIRANNA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are two appeals from judgments and decrees of the Madras High Court on appeal from the Subordinate Judge of Cocanada which have been consolidated and heard together. In 1880 one Tirupayya, son of Dorayya, died leaving a widow Venkataramanamma hereinafter referred to as the widow) who survived him for forty-one years. On her death the plaintiff, as next reversioner to her husband's estate, instituted the present suit to recover the properties that had stood in his name. The family belonged to the agricultural caste of Kammas, among whom the illatom custom obtains. After Tirupayya's death there were disputes which was referred to a panchayat who gave an award under which the estate was partitioned between the widow and one Ammanna, who was married to Tirupayya'a sister and according to the defendants' case had been adopted by Tirupayya's father Dorayya as an illatom son-in-law, and had thereby acquired a share in the family properties.

(2.) In 1888 the widow executed a conveyance to Ammanna of the properties which had been awarded to him, and conveyed the remaining properties to her daughter Nagamma on the occasion of her marriage, reserving only 6 acres odd for her own maintenance. On Nagamma's death in 1894 these properties descended to her daughter Ramalakshamma, who died in 1896, when her father Muneyya took possession of them without title, and they subsequently passed into the possession of some of the defendants. If the widow's conveyance to her daughter Nagamma amounted to a surrender of the whole estate to the next reversioner and so accelerated the succession, then the male reversioners' right to sue arose on her death in 1894, and the present suit as regards these properties is barred. If it did not, their right of suit arose on the widow's death in 1921 and the suit is in time. The Additional Subordinate Judge of Cocanada gave the plaintiff a decree for the properties conveyed by the widow to her daughter and otherwise dismissed the suit. The plaintiff and the defendants both appealed to the Madras High Court, who dismissed the plaintiff's appeal. On the defendants' appeal with reference to the properties conveyed by the widow to her daughter it was held that the suit was barred, and the decree of the lower Court was modified accordingly.

(3.) From these two appellate decrees of the High Court the plaintiff has preferred these appeals to His Majesty in Council. As regards the properties awarded to defendant 1's father Ammanna by the panchayat and subsequently conveyed to him by the widow, both Courts held that Ammanna had acquired a good title but for different reasons. The Subordinate Judge found that Ammanna was not adopted by Dorayya as an illatom son- in-law, and that the question of the adoption was not referred to the panchayat, but that the subsequent conveyance to him by the widow was good, because, as recited in the deed, it was made in accordance with her husband's directions. In the High Court both the learned Judges rejected this contention, which had not been pleaded, and it has not been put forward in the present appeal.