DORARAJA LAKSHMI NACHIAR Vs. RAMACHANDRA DORAI ALIAS PONNUSAMI TEVAR, MINOR THROUGH HIS NEXT FRIEND AND GUARDIAN SRAMA AIYAR, MANAGER UNDER THE COURT OF WARDS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AFTER dealing with the question of the age of the plaintiff their Lordships proceeded as follows:

(2.) BEHALF of the plaintiff (appellant) it was contended that, assuming the plaintiff to have been born before October 9th, 1880, she was still entitled to redeem the mortgage by the plaintiff's mother of March 13th, 1882, the period of limitation being sixty years. The argument was that the defendants being lawfully in possession under the mortgage of 1882, they were only entitled to prescribe as mortgagees and did not acquire any prescriptive title on the strength of their possession under the sale to them by the plaintiff's husband, on November 22nd, 1886. In the case of Seshamma Shettate V/s. Chickaya Hegade (1902) I.L.R. 25 M. 507 at p. 511 the law is thus laid down. "A person who lawfully came into possession of land as tenant from year to year or for a term of years, or as mortgagee, cannot, by setting up during the continuance of such relation, any title adverse to that of the landlord or mortgagor, as the case may be, inconsistent with the real legal relation between them, - and that however notoriously and to the knowledge of the other party - acquire, by the operation of the law of limitation, title as owner or any other title inconsistent with that under which she was let into possession." But the plaintiff's case as set up in the plaint is that the mortgage of 1882 was by a minor and was brought about by fraud and coercion. So, according to her own case, there never was any valid relation of mortgagor and mortgagee between her mother by whom the mortgage was executed and the defendants. This being so, she cannot now rely on the subsistence of such a relation so as to enable her to say that the prescriptive right acquired by the defendants was the right of a mortgagee under the mortgage of March 13th, 1882, and not the right of a full owner based on possession under the sale by the1 plaintiff's father. In this view, it is unnecessary to consider the contention that the sale by the father was a sale by him on the plaintiff's BEHALF as her guardian. We think the suit was rightly dismissed on the question of limitation. The appeal must be dismissed with costs.