NEELAKANTA RAO Vs. NARAYANASWAMI AIYAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiffs as reversionary heirs of one Ramachandra Ekanadha brought this action to recover certain immoveable property, the subject of this appeal, sold by Jamna Boi, the widow of the last male owner. Ramachandra Ekanadha, the last male owner, died in 1833 leaving his widow Jamna Boi and a daughter Soma Boi, then an infant of two years or thereabouts. The sale was made to six persons in equal shares by six separate sale-deeds on the 4th October 1860. The 10th defendant, the principal contesting defendant (whom we shall hereafter call the defendant) has now acquired the whole of the properties now in dispute through several intermediate sales from the alienees of the widow. The learned Subordinate Judge in the Court below has dismissed the plaintiffs suit in respect of these items on the ground that the sales were made by the widow to get money to pay debts borrowed by her for the expenses of the marriage of her daughter and for the cultivation expenses of some of her lands which had been affected by floods. The plaintiffs appeal and the principal question now is whether the finding of the Subordinate Judge on this matter is correct. The evidence as to the necessity for the sales is that of defendants witnesses Nos. 6, 13 and 15 who were all examined before a Commissioner, 16th witness for the defendants being one of the original alienees. As they were all examined on commission we are in as good a position as the Trial Judge to decide on their credibility and we have come to the conclusion that the evidence does not satisfactorily prove that the sales weremade for the purposes found by the lower Court.

(2.) Before dealing with that evidence it is we think necessary to refer to the written statement of the 10th defendant as that suggests that he himself had really no knowledge of the purpose for which the sales were made. In paragraph 7 he stated that these items of property had passed out of the hands of the original family before the year 185C. He does not even say that the properties were sold by the widow though in his evidence he admits that he was aware of the sales before he filed his statement. In paragraph 8 he stated that if there was a sale of these properties, which evidently he did not admit, it must have been for the purpose of procuring money for the marriage of the daughter. The learned Pleader for the appellants laid some stress on these two paragraphs of the written statement and argued with considerable force that the defendant who must necessarily have known that these lands were sold in 1860 deliberately put forward a false case to enable him to plead that if there was a sale it must have been made to discharge debts contracted for the daughter s marriage; and that if the plaintiffs were unable to prove an alienation by the widow, to plead that title to the property bad been extinguished by 12 years possession under the Limitation Act of 1859. It will be observed that the daughter was about 2 years of age at the time of Ekanadha s death in 1833 and the Inam Register shows that the daughter must have been about 29 or 30 at the time of these sales. The suit properties were inam lands and the sale-deeds executed by Jamna Boi were produced before the Inam Commissioners. She must have been married in the early forties, a number of years before the sales and we think that was the reason why the defendant put the sales as near to the date of the marriage as he could. Not merely did the defendant plead that the alienations were before, 1850 but be examined a considerable number of witnesses, about 10, (including the three who gave evidence as to the purpose) before the Commissioner, for the purpose of proving that the sales, took place in the year 1853 or before, that is before the Parithapi storm of March 1853, At the time when the defendant led this evidence plaintiffs had not produced the Inam Register which showed that the sales were made on the 4th October 1860. It is only after the plaintiffs had produced the Inam Register that the defendant through a witness produced two of the original sale-deeds, Exhibits XIII and XIV, which we have reason to suspect were in the hands of the defendant himself.

(3.) The defendant, therefore, started with a case which was obviously false and sought to support it by evidence of witnesses among whom the principal ones are the three on whose evidence he depends to prove the necessity for the sales. The most important of these witnesses is Gopala Aiyar one of the original vendees from Jamna Boi. The sales as we have stated above were to six persons including Gopala Aiyar who were all inhabitants of a place called Villianallur. The principal person who negotiated the sales was one Seethapathi Aiyar: the oldest among them. It appears from the evidence of Gopala Aiyar himself that he was then a boy of about 17 and that his affairs were managed by his brother-in-law one Panchanada Aiyar. It appears to us doubtful whether this Gopala Aiyar was present at all at the sale. At any rate there can be no doubt that he took no part in the negotiation or the obtaining of the sales, but it was Seethapathi Aiyar that arranged the whole thing on behalf of himself and his co-vendees. This witness deliberately put the date of sale in the Parithapi year, i. e., 1852-1853 in order that his evidence may accord with the statement already filed by the 10th defendant. In order to make the year of sale (ally with his age then, which he says was seventeen, he gives his present age as 77, in which case he would have been about 21 years of age and not 17 at the time of the sale. We think that these statements were deliberately made and were not due to any lapse of memory. He also says that with the price two debt bonds were paid off, and the bonds handed over to him: which again is scarcely likely, considering that he was a boy in his teens, while the negotiations were conducted and completed by Seethapathi Iyer. The two debt bonds which he says were handed over to him are not produced and it is said they were eaten up by white ants and destroyed. One curious difference may be noted between his evidence and that of Chockalingam Pillai, the defendants 6th witness, who is said to have been present at the sale. While Chockalinga says that the debt bonds were in cadjan this witness is positive that they were in paper. He speaks to a number of details which it is scarcely likely he could have remembered at this distance of time. We are not, therefore, prepared to place any reliance upon this man s story.