GAFUR MOHAMMAD Vs. MOHAMMAD SHARIF

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is the defendant's appeal from a decree of the Court of the Judicial Commissioner, Central Provinces, of date 22 November, 1927, decreeing the plaintiff' suit against him, and reversing a decree of 28th September 1925, of the Subordinate Judge at Balaghat who had dismissed it. The plaintiffs although served did not appear before the Board.

(2.) The object of the proceedings was to obtain a decree, such as has been made by the Court of the Judicial Commissioner, setting aside a lakh and parsadi lease of the mauza Saheki in the District Balaghat granted to the appellant on 2 November, 1916. Of that mauza Saheki, Mohammad Kasam, father of the respondents, had been up to his death the owner. It was his self-acquired property. By his will of 9 December 1915, made a few days before he died, Mohammad Kasam bequeathed Saheki in shares to his sons-three respondents and a fourth son Hasam, since dead and he appointed his eldest son the respondent Sharif, to be guardian of his (Sharifs) three younger brothers all then infants. The financial position of the testator at the time of his death has been a subject of discussion in the Courts in India. He himself apparently regarded it unfavourably. "At present," he says in his will, "I have no cash or grain in balance, but I have to repay debts to the creditors amounting to two thousand rupees." He died six days later, on 15 December 1915, survived by his four sons, some daughters, his widow Mt. Masumbi, mother of Sharif and Hasam, and his widow Mt. Ladli Begam, mother of the respondents Kadar and Latif. There are to be found in the record traces of some rivalry between widow Masumbi and her sons on the one hand and widow Ladli Begam and her sons on the other. In that connexion it is not perhaps irrelevant to note that both of the testator's widows and all of his sons were parties to the lease sought to be impeached.

(3.) On the application of Sharif and his three minor brothers on 7 January 1916, mutation of names in their favour was effected and by Tahsildar's order of 22 March, 1916 Sharif was appointed sub-lambardar of the mauza vice his father. It may be observed in passing that plainly Sharif then represented himself to be and was regarded as being adult. In that state of the title to Saheki the lease of 2 November, 1916 was granted. To its terms attention must presently be directed. But before that is done it will be convenient to ascertain the relation in which it stands to an earlier registered lakh and parsadi lease of the same Saheki which on 26th May 1905, had been granted by the testator to one Birakhbhan.