SUKHDEO Vs. UJAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WHEN any person takes in his own name a lease in perpetuity, or indeed any other lease or any other contract, with money belonging to himself and others, the rights of those others against him are not affected by his omission to mention their names, though their rights and liabilities in respect of the other party to the contract may be. This is ordinarily understood when, for instance, the Manager of a joint Hindu family takes a perpetual lease of a village in his own name. It is however frequently imagined, as was done in the lower appellate Court in this case, that there is some difference when the lessor does not grant the lease voluntarily but is compelled to do so under the provisions of Section 107 of the Land Revenue Act.

(2.) THE case can hardly be said to have' been conducted with much care in the Courts below. It seems more than probable that the fields in question in the suit of 1902 could easily have been proved to be the same as those in question here, but no attempt to do this was made. Also the only documentary evidence of the length of possession of this land by Sukhdeo and his father Hari was a note made by the Patwari on the certified' copy of the entry in the jamabandi for 1924-25 to the effect that that possession had been continuous since the Settlement of 1906-07. That is a note made on the copy, not a copy of a note made in the jamabandi, but even if It were a note in the jamabandi it would be of no use whatever as that jamabandi was not written till the very end of the year 1924, if not after it, and the present suit was filed on the 15th of September of that year.

(3.) THESE jamabandi entries show Sukhdeo's father Hari in possession from 1907-08 till 1921-22, when he died, and Sukhdeo himself thereafter. They go a long way to establish the allegation that that separate possession had lasted for the last forty years, which Sukhdeo supported by his own deposition and the depositions of several witnesses and the plaintiff Ujjal did nothing at all to contradict, even by appearing as a witness himself, beyond making the false statement in his plaint that Sukhdeo had quite lately taken wrongful possession of the land of which he had no knowledge till five months before he filed the suit.