PRAMATHA NATH MUKHOPADHYA Vs. CHANDRA SEKHAR BANERJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by two of the plaintiffs against the decision of the learned District Judge of Bankura, dated the 5th October 1915, reversing the decision of the Munsif of Bishunpur. The suit was brought by the two plaintiffs-appellants and the plaintiff No. 3 respondent to recover rent or rather it was instituted by the two appellants with the plaintiff respondent as a defendant. But as the case came to trial, this defendant was transferred to the category of the plaintiffs and the suit was tried as if brought by the three plaintiffs to recover rent from a tenant. It is common ground that one of the plaintiffs, that is, plaintiff No. 3 had ousted the defendant from the holding and so it is quite clear that as against the plaintiff No. 3 who had ousted the defendant, the rent was suspended during the period of ouster. But it is said that that cannot affect the appellants, the other two plaintiffs. The facts found are these. This was a joint letting to the tenant. The rent was one rent and the holding was one holding and, therefore, the contract of tenancy was between, on the one hand, the three plaintiffs as landlords and on the other hand, the tenant and, as the obligations of the tenant were to pay the entire rent to the three landlords, so the obligations of the landlords towards the tenant were equally joint, namely, to see that the tenant remained in quiet enjoyment and possession of the holding let out. When one of the landlords committed a breach of the contract of tenancy by dispossessing the tenant during the time the tenant was kept out of possession, owing to that act of the landlord the entire rent was suspended.

(2.) Then another point was made that one of the years for which the rent was claimed, was after the tenant had been restored to possession. That appears not to be so. In any case, that matter was never enquired into in the lower Courts.

(3.) I think the conclusion arrived at by the learned Judge of the lower Appellate Court is correct. The present appeal, therefore, fails and must be dismissed with costs. Smither, J.