(PIUNS) KANTIMOHAN Vs. RAMBALLABH DAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These three applications arise out of a mortgage suit which is pending before the Subordinate Judge, Second Court at Arrah. Two of these applications have been preferred by the plaintiff and one by defendants 3 and 4. The mortgage bond which is the subject-matter of the suit was executed by defendants 1 and 2, fathers of defendants 3 and 4 (who are minors) as kartas of their family in favour of one Gobind Ram in 1928. In 1931 the plaintiff brought the mortgage suit alleging to be a son of Gobind Ram.

(2.) There were six principal defendants in the suit besides a number of pro forma defendants. Two written statements were filed one by defendants 1 and 2 and the other on behalf of the minor defendants 3 and 4 in August 1931, but nothing was stated in either of them to indicate that the defendants intended to challenge the allegation of the plaintiff that he was the son of Gobind Ram. This matter was also not made the subject matter of any of the issues which were framed on 11th December 1931. Subsequently however the Court was persuaded to appoint one Pandit Ram Narain Choubey as the guardian of the minors, and on 15 August 1933 in a supplementary written statement filed by the newly appointed guardian, the locus standi of the plaintiff to bring the suit was challenged.

(3.) Thereupon the plaintiff served an interrogatory upon the guardian to find out what the allegation exactly meant and it was elicited then that what the defendants meant to assert was that, so far as they had ascertained by inquiry, the plaintiff was not the son of Gobind Ram, deceased. Till that stage however no documents were filed by the defendants in support of their assertion, but two documents, namely a trust deed and a copy of a certain school register, were filed subsequently on 17 and 18 November 1933 after the evidence for the defendants had been closed.