SARDAR KIRPAL SINGH Vs. SARDAR BALWANT SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the defendant in the suit from a decree, dated the 16th January 1909, of the Chief Court of the Punjab, which varied a decree, dated the 31st July 1907, of the District Judge of Gujranwala.

(2.) The plaintiffs, who are Sikh Jats, and the sons of Sardar Gurbakhsh Singh, deceased, brought their suit in the Court of the District Judge of Gujranwala, to obtain possession of ancestral lands which had been conveyed in their lifetime by their father to the defendant by a deed dated the 26th August, 1892. They alleged in their plaint that, according to the custom of the agriculturists of the Punjab, their father was not competent to sell the ancestral lands without necessity, and that their father was a debauchee and an extravagant person, and there was no necessity for the sale, and they prayed for a decree cancelling the sale-deed and for possession on condition that they should pay to the defendant the money, if any, which might be proved to have been paid by the defendant to their father for valid necessity. The defendant, so far as is now material, alleged in his written statement that he purchased the land in good faith on payment of lawful consideration without knowledge that the plaintiffs father was a debauchee and an extravagant person, that no debt was contracted by their father without necessity, and that the debt which their father contracted with him was spent for valid necessities. The defendant did not in his written statement deny that the plaintiffs and their father were agriculturists to whom the custom alleged by the plaintiffs would apply.

(3.) According to the sale-deed of the 26th August 1892 the consideration was Rs. 18,000, the details of which stated in that deed were-