T S RAMANATHA AYYAR Vs. SABDUL SALAM SAHIB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this appeal, the respondents (decree-holders) filed a suit on a usufructuary mortgage claiming a sum of Rs. 40,000 with interest. In due course a preliminary decree in the usual form was granted and was followed in April, 1937, by a final decree, which related that as the money ordered to be paid under the preliminary decree had not been paid the mortgaged property or a sufficient part thereof should be sold in order to satisfy the decree. It was further ordered that the balance, if any, should be paid to the judgment-debtor or other person entitled to receive the same. In the execution proceedings which followed, the decree-holder asked for an order that the property should be sold. The judgment-debtor, however, claimed that the property should be sold only after allowance had been made for compensation due to him for acts of waste committed by the decree- holder or his legal representatives after the decree had been passed. The estimate for this compensation was some Rs. 15,000. The learned District Judge made a very short order on the petition before him, and dealing with this question of damage he said : The judgment-debtors will have to file a separate suit as complicated matters requiring a regular suit with issues, not capable of determination in summary proceedings, will have to be gone into. The waste complained of and the damage claimed arose, according to the judgment-debtors, after the final decree, and so need not be gone into in this suit. It is manifest that this order is wrong on the face of it. The question raised by the judgment-debtor against the decree-holder either arose in the words of Section 47 of the Civil Procedure Code "in relation to the execution... of the decree," or it did not. If it so arose., then it fell to be determined by the learned District Judge, and whether it was complicated or not, he could not avoid this duty. On the other hand, if he decided that it did not so arise, then he should have dismissed the application as not being maintainable.

(2.) Whether or not a claim such as this to compensation for acts of waste is a question arising in execution has been considered in several cases. In Hari v. Sakharam and Bai Lalbu V/s. Mohanlal , it was held that the Court executing a decree is entitled in the course of execution proceedings to go into the question whether the party in possession of property has committed waste by wilfully damaging the property after the date of the decree and before the date of application for execution. The damages when assessed can be recovered from the party at fault in the same proceedings. These Bombay decisions were cited to, and approved by, a Bench of this Court in Dhanarajagerji V/s. Parthasarathy (1932) I.L.R. 57 Mad. 49. In that case the Court held that: When a decree awards a person a certain property, he is entitled to get it in the state in which it was when that decree was passed. He cannot be said to get it in that state, if the property, while in the opponent's possession, suffered deterioration by damage done by him subsequent to the decree. Whether, when the property was delivered, it continued to be in the state in which it was when the decree was passed or in the meantime underwent deterioration and the decree-holder is entitled to compensation for the loss caused by such deterioration is a matter that should be considered in execution under Section 47 of the Civil Procedure Code.

(3.) Substituting the word "judgment-debtor " for " decree-holder " we think the principle is the same and is applicable in the circumstances of this case.