GOTIRAM NANA NEVADE Vs. KESARBAI KEVALCHAND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question is, whether the property purchased by defendants Nos. 2 and 3 appellants from defendant No. 1 is subject to the right of residence in favour of the plaintiff-respondent, the widowed mother of defendant No. 1. The trial Court held that it was not. The lower appellate Court held that it was. Defendants Nos. 2 and 3 appeal.

(2.) The plaintiff's claim in the first instance was based on an agreement to sell the property to her passed by her son and bearing a date anterior to the conveyance in favour of the appellants. That document has been held by both the lower Courts, and in my opinion justly, to be spurious and to be in fact the result of a conspiracy between the mother and the son to defeat the right of the appellants purchasers. Both the lower Courts have also found that they were transferees in good faith with notice of the right of residence of the widow but in theory only, because as a matter of fact for five years prior to the suit she had of her own accord left the family house, the subject-matter of the present litigation, and had been residing in another house in the vicinity in that village.

(3.) It has also been found that the greater portion of the consideration of the purchase was expended in paying off the mortgage of one Hemchand passed by defendant No. 1 and not challenged by the plaintiff-respondent as in any way immoral. It to these facts that the law as to the right of residence as against the purchasers has to be applied.