PALACHERLA VENKANNA Vs. YERMATI VENKANNA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We regret we are unable to accept the finding of the learned Subordinate Judge that the assent of the sapindas, relied on and proved in this case, is "not enough." At one part of his judgment he says: The consent seems to have been obtained -by the representation that the husband had given her authority to adopt.

(2.) If this sentence is the only sentence in the judgment it may be possible to argue that he meant to give a finding that the consent was obtained by such representation and no weight is to be attached to the word "seems". But, later on, he said: "for aught one knows, they might simply have relied on the representation, etc." This later sentence shows that he had in his mind only the possibility that the consent was obtained by such representation. All that he meant to find was that the defendants did not displace such possibility. It seems to us that a finding of this kind is not enough to reject the sapinda's assent.

(3.) It is true that a sapinda's assent, to be the foundation of an adoption, must be obtained uninfluenced by any statement of the widow that there was also the husband's authority, if the evidence shows that the widow made such a statement. In Subramanyan V/s. Venkanna [1908] 26 Mad. 627 it appears as to the assent of the remoter gnatis that the widow herself, in her evidence, states that she obtained their oral assent to the adoption by representing it to each of them that she had her husbands's authority.