BHAIYA RABIDAT SINGH Vs. MAHARANI INDAR KUNWAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IT appears to their Lordships that this case is free from difficulty.

(2.) THE will of the late Maharajah of Bulrampur, Sir Digbijai Singh, was recently under the consideration of' this Board on the occasion of a claim by his junior widow to joint proprietary rights in his estate. Their Lordships then expressed their opinion that, according to the true construction of the will, the Maharajah conferred upon his senior widow (who is the first Defendant in the present suit), and upon her alone, a life estate in all his property, and authority to select and adopt such minor male child of his family as she might think fit. The adoption which she was not only authorized but required to make was to be "according to the custom of the family and according to the Hindu law," and the adopted son was to "be in place of an actual son the owner of the entire riasat, and the assets moveable and immoveable," the widow taking a provision for her maintenance.

(3.) THE Appellant, who is a distant relative of the late Maharajah, and the person upon whom, according to the rules of intestate succession prescribed by the Oudh Estates Act, 1869, in default of any widow of the Maharajah, or any son adopted by her, as provided by the Act, or any male lineal descendant of such son, the Maharajah's talukdari estate would descend, brought this suit for the purpose of having it declared that the adoption of the second Defendant was invalid, fraudulent, and void.