JAVITRI Vs. GENDAN SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The dispute in this case is with regard to certain zamindari property in a village called Nagla Anni. Admittedly this property once belonged to a man named Suchcha Ram who died in 1870. In the plaint there in exhibited a pedigree about which, except in one particular, there was no dispute in the Court below and from this it appears that Suchcha Ram had two wives, Mt. Nand Kunwar the elder wife, and Mt. Gias Kunwar the younger.

(2.) The plaintiffs in the present suit are the daughter's grandsons and great- grandsons of Suchcha Ram through his wife Mt. Nand Kunwar. The sole defendant in the suit was Mt. Javitri, who claimed to be Suchcha Ram's grand-daughter of his daughter Mt. Parbati. In other words, Javitri was the granddaughter of Suchcha Ram's younger wife Mt. Gias Kunwar. In the Court below the plaintiffs denied the parentage of Mt. Javitri saying that she was not the daughter of Mt. Parbati. The Court below, however, has found in favour of Mt. Javitri on this point and that finding is no longer in dispute.

(3.) The case for the plaintiffs was that on the death of Mt. Parbati in 1922, the succession opened and the property devolved upon them as the nearest bandhus of Suchcha Ram. It was alleged in para. 9 of the plaint that there were no other heirs of Suchcha Ram than the plaintiffs. It was admitted in the plaint that on the 5 February 1869, about a year before his death, Suchcha Ram had executed a deed of gift by which he purported to give 5 biswas of Nagla Anni to his wife Mt. Nand Kunwar and the remaining 15 biswas to his second wife Mt. Gias Kunwar. The plaintiffs, however, maintain that this deed was not given effect to and that the two widows succeeded as joint heirs of their husband after his death in the year 1870. After Suchcha Ram's death, by a deed executed on the 24 May 1870, the two widows divided the property, one third being assigned to Mt. Nand Kunwar and two-thirds to Mt. Gias Kunwar. After this it is said that Mt. Nand Kunwar made a gift of her one-third share to her daughter's son, Narain Singh. The two-thirds share, which was in the possession of Mt. Gias Kunwar, descended to her daughter Mt. Parbati and it was stated that in the year 1878, by partition arranged between Narain Singh on the one side and Parbati on the other two mahals were constituted, one of Narain Singh and one of Mt. Parbati in accordance with the shares above specified. It was, however, claimed that neither Mt. Gias Kunwar nor Mt. Parbati had more than the limited estate of Hindu females in the shares last mentioned, and the plaintiff,therefore, claimed that they were entitled to succeed on the death of Mt. Parbati. Mt. Javitri, it was pleaded, had no right to take the property after Parbati's death.