KRISHNA PROMADA DASI Vs. DHIRENDRA NATH GHOSH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE facts of this case are somewhat unusual. The plaintiffs, as executors of the late Upendra Nath Ghose, sue the defendant, Srimati Krishna Promada Dassi, his brother's widow, to recover certain lands which they claim formed part of a permanently settled estate described as taujik 1240, which the deceased Upendra purchased at a revenue sale of this taujik for arrears of land revenue in the year 1908.

(2.) IN 1899 there had been a partition suit in the family of Upendra and of the defendant's deceased husband, and by the partition decree the immovable properties in Schedule 6 of the decree were allotted to Upendra and the immovable properties in Schedule 8 were allotted to the present defendant as her husband's widow. It is common ground that the lands allotted to the widow included the lands claimed by the plaintiffs in this suit. The plaintiffs' case is that at the time of permanent settlement they formed part of what is now taujik 1240, and that even assuming, which the plaintiffs do not deny, that the owners of 1240 had lost their title to these lands by adverse possession and under the law of limitation, that they had become the property of his own family and had been partitioned as such, they still remained liable for the rent or land revenue fixed on estate No. 1240, and were liable to be sold for failure to pay the land revenue fixed on this estate under Section 37 of the Land Revenue Sales Act, 1859. The new owners might, if they had so desired, have had the portion of estate No. 1240, which had passed to them by adverse possession, separately assessed to land revenue, but, as they had omitted to do so, it continued to form part of the security for the whole land revenue of estate No. 1240 and to be liable to be sold under the section already cited. In their Lordships' opinion this was clearly so, and has been so held by this Board in Surja Kanta Acharjya v. Sarat Chandra Roy Chowdhuri 18 Cal. W.N. 1281.

(3.) IT was held by both the lower Courts that the suit lands did form part of estate No. 1240, and that the plaintiffs, as executors of the deceased Upendra, were not estopped from suing for them.