PROTIVA SUNDARI DEBI Vs. SARADA CHARAN GOHO

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff in this case asks for a declaration that the sale held by the Registrar of this Court on 25 September 1931 in Suit No. 1120 of 1927 is not binding. The facts are not in dispute. The plaintiff's husband and one Himangshu Sekhar Gupta were the joint owners of a moiety of a printing press known as the Gupta Press situate at No. 221, Cornwallis Street, and the copyright in a publication known as the Gupta Press Panjika as well as other publications.

(2.) The owner of the other moiety was the defendant Sushila Bala Debi. In the year 1918 Sushila Bala Debi brought a suit against the plaintiff's husband for partition and accounts, and on 28 June 1918 Mr. Nripendra Nath Bose was appointed receiver. The terms on which he was appointed are set out in para. 3 of the plaint, and he was appointed to take possession of the Gupta Press with its goodwill, lease hold rights, machinery, stock-in-trade, printing machineries copyright and materials of and in the Gupta Press Panjika or Year Book, corrugated iron roof room on the first floor of premises No. 221, Cornwallis. Street, to be sold as a going concern by the receiver, and the copy right in other publications, with liberty to the parties to bid and set off half the amount of the bid less Rs. 4,000.

(3.) On 20 December 1923 the receiver was directed to print the publication known as the Gupta Press Panjika for the year 1924-25 and to raise Rs. 5,000 at 12 per cent on the security of the Gupta Press concern for, I presume, the purposes of financing the publication, which he did by a mortgage dated 8 August 1924, whereby he borrowed Rs. 5,000 from the defendant Sarada Charan Goho on the security of what I may very shortly state was the press and its goodwill. The defendant Goho brought a suit in this Court on his mortgage and obtained a final decree which directed the mortgaged properties to be sold, and it is alleged that at the sale in execution of the decree not only was the mortgaged property sold but other property not included in the mortgage was also sold. So far as the plaintiff charges that was done fraudulently, such charge has now been withdrawn and the case has been limited to the claim to have the sale set aside so far as it affects property which was sold and which was not the subject of the mortgage and therefore should not have been sold. What was mortgaged was all beneficial interest and goodwill in the said business carried on under the name and style of Gupta Press at 221 Cornwallis Street, Calcutta, and secondly, all and singular the several chattels and things belonging to the said Gupta Press concern and specifically described in the schedule hereto.