KISAN Vs. TUKARAM TIDKE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS judgment will dispose of the appeal as also the cross objections preferred by the plaintiffs and the defendant respectively.

(2.) THE plaintiffs sued to set aside an alienation made by the widow of one Dhanaji in favour of the defendant, in their capacity as reversionary heirs of the last male holder Dhanaji. Dhanaji died in 1910 and his widow Girji in 1917, and Sarji, who was the only surviving co-widow, died in 1923. She sold the property in suit to the defendant by a sale deed dated 8th May 1918 for a consideration of Rs. 9,000. The plaintiffs question the binding character of the sale on the ground that it was not supported by legal necessity, and the transaction was brought about in collusion with Sarji's mukhtiar Narsaji by causing a bogus consideration to be recited in the sale-deed. The reversioners alleged that the property sold was worth Rs. 18,000 at the date of the suit.

(3.) THE defendant being dissatisfied with the decree preferred an appeal to the Court of the District Judge, and the plaintiffs in their turn filed cross-objections. The District Judge came to the conclusion that instead of the total value of the property being Rs. 12,450 he would estimate the value of the land at Rs. 10,000, that the same sale was imprudent, that the proper procedure for the widow would have been to retain certain fields and to sell the rest; and that these fields would have sufficed for her maintenance and would not have been lost to the reversionera. He, therefore, upheld the finding of the trial Court that the plaintiffs were in equity entitled to possession of the property on payment of the amount found due for legal necessity. As to the binding character of the decretal debts he held that they were debts of Dhanaji's time and personal ones of the widow; that so far as the money decree was concerned Sarji contested the case vigorously until part of the evidence had been recorded and was justified in compromising it; and that as she fully represented the estate she had full power to compromise the dispute with the creditor. The four months time allowed by the first Court for payment of Rs. 9,000 having expired the lower appellate Court allowed three months time from the date of its own decree and added the following clause to the decree: that on failure to do so (to pay Rs. 9,000 within the time fixed) the plaintiffs' suit will stand dismissed with all costs on them.