LUCHMUN LAL CHOWDHARY Vs. KANHYA LAL MOWAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE Plaintiff, the Respondent in the present appeal, is according to natural relationship the nearest bundhu or heir of Kishen Lal Chowdhry, who died on the 16th of February, 1840, without issue, but survived by his widow Bhuina Chowdhrain, who possessed his estates till her death on the 30th of October, 1886, when the Appellant took possession.

(2.) THE present suit was instituted on the 9th of January, 1888. The Respondent asked that his right of inheritance in respect of the properties left by Kishen Lal Chowdhry should be declared by decree and that he should be awarded possession. The title set up by the Defendant and Appellant was that of a son, on the statement that Kishen Lal Chowdhry before his death had given permission to his wife to adopt a son to him, and that after his death she had exercised the power given to her and had adopted him as the son of her deceased husband.

(3.) IN this view his counsel maintained two grounds of defence. The first of these was that the Respondent had no title to succeed, because, admitting his natural relationship to the deceased Kishen Lal Chowdhry, it was alleged by the Appellant, and had been proved, that the Respondent had been adopted into another family, with the result that he ceased in law and in fact to be a member of the Chowdhry family, and therefore could not take up the succession of Kishen Lal Chowdhry. The second was the defence of limitation. The judgments of both Courts were against the Appellant on these grounds of defence also.