MEHDI ALI KHAN Vs. GHANSHIAM SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The short question upon this appeal was whether the learned Judges of the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad were justified in ordering, as they did on May 28, 1923, that a written compromise of all questions in the suit as between the appellant and the two respondents should be filed and proceeded with. In making this order the High Court differed from the Subordinate Judge at Muzaffarnagar, who, on February 1, 1922, had refused to pass such a decree.

(2.) Many questions were canvassed in the Courts in India. The issue, however, as presented to the Board, had become a narrow one, The facts on which it depends lie in a small compass.

(3.) The respondent, Chaudhri Ghanshiam Singh, is a Hindu of position. Amongst the properties with which he had apparently dealt as his own wore two villages- Mauza Dudhli and Mauza Barsu. These he had purported to mortgage with possession to the appellant, Saiyid Mehdi Ali Khan. He had also granted a mortgage over Mauza Barsu to one Lala Gokal Chand. It is not necessary for present purposes to detail the mortgages over other property granted by Ghanshiam to other creditors, and particularised in the plaint in this suit. It suffices to say that as a result of his borrowing transactions Ghanshiam had, in the early part of 1920, become so gravely embarrassed that in May of that year the appellant instituted against him in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Meerut a suit to enforce his security over the two villages named. What defences were or would have been raised therein by Ghanshiam their Lordships do not know, because further progress apparently ceased as the result of the institution of this suit by the respondent, Kunwar Bharat Singh, in the circumstances now to be stated.