- (1.)These are two Letters Patent Appeals arising out of a suit for redemption. It appears that Hansa was the owner of some land situated in Shahgunj in the Agra City, whereon stood a kutcha house and chaupal. In 1S61 he mortgaged with possession the paid land with the kutcha house and chaupal standing thereon to Hargobind in lien of Rs. 20. On the 30th of June 1863, Hansa sold his equity of redemption in that property to Jugal Kiehore, the predecessor in interest of the present plaintiffs. Jugal Kishore filed a suit for redemption and obtained a decree on the 6th of October 1863, conditional on his paying Rs. 20 to the mortgagee. No time was fixed by the decree for the payment of that money, and no money was in fact paid to Hurgobind in pursuance it. Whether that was due to some private arrangement with Hargobinod or some other cause is not clear.
(2.)Hargobind subsequently pulled down the kutcha kotha and chaupal standing thereon and built a shop and a balikhana at a cost, of Rs. 5,500. He rmained in possesion of that property till 1989, when ha mortgaged the Bhop and bilakhnni, which the land upon which they stood, to one Khubi Ram, describe himself as the absolute owner of that property, This mortgage was limited. Later on, he executed two duels of further charge in favour of Khubi Ram. On the 25th of May 1901 the heirs of Khubi Ram got a decree for sale on foot of those deeds and in execution of that decree the property in question was sold by auction on the 1st of August 1902 and purchased by the decree-holder themselves. The auction purchasers subsequently sold their rights in the said property to the present defendants by two sale-deeds, one of which was executed on the 29th of January 1904 and the other on the 22od of May 1905
(3.)The present suit was filed by the plaintiffs on the 26th of March 1915 for the redemption of the mortgage made by Hansa in 1881. The Court of first, instance dame to the conclusion that the claim was not barred by limitation, that a second suit for redemption was maintainable, and that the plaintiffs were entitled to a decree for redemption on payment of Rs, 20 on account of the principal sum secured by the mortgage. One of the pleas urged by the defendants was that their predecessor, Har Gibind, had built shops and other apartments on the land in dispute at a considerable cost and that the plaintiffs were not entitled to get back the property without paying the costs of the constructions made by him. The Court of first instance found that one of the houses originally existing on the disputed land had fallen down and that the mortgagee was justified in re-building it. It, therefore, allowed Rs. 100 on account of the cost of its re-construction, In regard to the remaining buildings, standing on the land, its finding was that those buildings had been constructed in order to improve the house and that the plaintiffs were not liable for the costs of those improvements. The decree passed by that Court, consequently, was that the plaintiffs should get possession of the property, including the improvements made by the mortgage, on payment of Rs. 120 to the defendants. That decree was upheld by the Court of first appeal, On second appeal to this Court, which tame up before a Single Judge, it was field that, although the predecessors in title of the defendants, namely, the heirs of Khubi Ram, had been in adverse possession of the disputed property since the 1st of August 1902, and had been sneered by the defendants, who had been in adverse possession from the date of their purchase, the defendants were not entitled to took on the period of their adverse possession to the period of the adverse possession held by the heirs of Khubh Ram. On that ground alone the learned Judge dismissed the appeal, except in so far that he allowed the defendants to remove the materials of the constructions made by their predecessor in title subject to their undertaking to restore the land to the condition in which it was, with the buildings as they stood on the date of the mortgage.