LAL CHAND MARWARI Vs. RAMRUP GIR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are consolidated appeals by the defendants in four out of eight suits instituted by one Ramrup Gir in the Court of the First Class Sub-Judge at Muzafferpur on November 30, 1916. The suits were brought on the allegation that the plaintiff, as the then Mahant of an asthal or math at Paprikhan Karan, was entitled to recover from the defendants different properties, endowments of the math, then in their possession These properties had, it was alleged, been alienated without warrant by Bhawan Gir, deceased, the immediate predecessor as mahant of the plaintiff. The suits, as they progressed, were amended by the joinder as co- plaintiffs of three persons to whom in consideration of their supplying funds for the conduct of the litigation Ramrup Gir had agreed to transfer when recovered certain portions of the properties in question. As so amended they were heard at length by the learned Subordinate Judge, and, on appeal, by the High Court at Patna, where many issuee were raised and strenuously contested. Of these one only remains for determination by their lordships, namely, the issue of limitation, The learned trial Judge hell that the suits were barred by statute. The High Court, on appeal, held that they were not, and made decrees for possesion of the properties with mesne profits. It is against these decrees and on the ground that the suits should have been dismissed as being out of time that the present appeals have been brought and argued.

(2.) The math in question has a considerable history,, It is a math of the Sanyasis who am celibate and have renounced the world. The properties in suit had been amongst its endowed properties for a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years. They stood in the name of the mahant for (the time being, but he had no right to alienate them otherwise than for necessity. The income from them at one time, at all events, amounted to Rs. 4,000 a year, approprial ed not to a single deity, but for Puja of Siuji, the principal deity,. for the Pujas of the other established deities of them math and in the entertainment of mendicants and ascetics. These matters, all in dispute in the Courts below, were not again raised in contest before the Board, and may now be taken to be accepted.

(3.) In the year 1880 or shortly afterwards Bhawan Gir became mahant of this asthal or math. He had, as his elder Chela, the plaintiff Ramrup Gir, and, an his younger Chela, one Harihar Gir. Bhawan Qir was drunken immoral and dissolute, and, as might be expected of such a person, profligate and extravagant, Portions of the endowed properties he mortgaged without justification by way of security : or loans made to himself. Other portions equally without justification he purported to sell outright. The proceeds in every case were, it can hardly be doubted, spent mainly, if no; entirely, upon himself. The properties mortgaged have since been sold under decrees made in suits brought to enforce the securities. And so it has come about that those properties now in dispute have all of them been in the exclusive possassion of the defendants or their predecessors-in-title as for absolute interests for periods exceeding on November 30, 1916, in every instance a term of twenty-six years of continuous duration.