HEMLATA DEBI Vs. RADHARAMAN BANERJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is preferred against the decision of the learned District Judge of Suri, dated the 13th August 1917. The appellant applied for revocation of the Letters of Administration with the Will annexed that had been issued to her brother-in-law, one of the respondents to the present appeal, as the certified guardian and for the use of his wife, the other respondent. The appellant, who was the petitioner in the Court below, says that the Letters ought to be revoked on the ground that there is defect in the substance and also on the ground that no inventory of the estate has been furnished to the Court. The facts are these: The estate, which amounts to Rs. 399, belonged to the father of the applicant. He had a wife and six daughter Section. Three of the daughters had been married during his lifetime and the other three were not. On his death, an application was made for issue of Letters of Administration with the Will annexed. The time that elapsed between the date when the application was filed in Court and the date when the Letters were ordered to issue was not long, because the date of filing the application was the 1st June 1903 and the order for issue of the Letters of Administration was made on the 25th June 1903. From the proceedings in the original application for Letters of Administration with the Will annexed, it is quite clear that there was no concealment from the Court. The application stated quite fully what the deceased s family consisted of at the time of his death. Further, the widow would ordinarily be the heiress of the deceased and after her would come in the daughters who were unmarried at the date of his death and then would come the married daughter Section. In order to get over the difficulty which met the appellant, she set up that the mother was a lunatic at the date of her father s death and, therefore, should be excluded from the course of succession under the Hindu Law and that, as this fact was not brought to the notice of the Court, there was a defect in substance, the citation having been issued on the lunatic There is no reason to think that her mother was other than a sane one at the time of her husband s death. As to the citation, we have got the document by which the Judge directed the Nazir to serve certain citation Section Special citation went only to the widow. General citations were served in the proper and usual manner. I think in this case that the citation was properly issued; at any rate, it was issued in the manner in which the Court directed that it should issue and which the Court thought proper. There cannot be any defect in substance as regards that.

(2.) The next point that was urged was that the inventory of the estate had not been filed. As it has not been shown that it was wilfully or unreasonably withheld, there is no reason why the Letters should be revoked. It seems to have been assumed by the learned Vakil for the appellant in the course of his argument that, if he could show that there had been no inventory, he was entitled to have the Letters of Administration revoked. But this is not so. He has got to show that it was wilfully and unreasonably withheld and that the Court would have jurisdiction to direct that Letters of Administration should be revoked. I think no cause has been shown in the present case why the Letters of Administration with the Will annexed should be revoked and it has been held on more than one occasion that when an application like this is made years after the grant of the Letters of Administration, cause has got to be shown why the Letters should at this date be revoked when it may be very difficult or even impossible to procure evidence which would establish the due execution of the Will. Nothing has been shown in this case which would lead us to come to the conclusion that the appellant has established any cause for having the Letters of Administration revoked, as prayed for. I agree with the conclusion arrived at by the learned District Judge. The present appeal, therefore, fails and must be dismissed with costs, two gold mohur section. Beachcroft, J.

(3.) I agree.