Shah J. - (1.) Vijay Pratap Singh, (hereinafter called the plaintiff) - a minor - by his next friend Pandit Brij Mohan Misir filed a petition in the Court of the Subordinate Judge, Faizabad, for leave to sue in forma pauperis for declaration of title to the Ajodhya Raj and accretions thereso and for possession and mesne profits for years prior to the suit. The petition was rejected by the Subordinate Judge because, in his view, it disclosed no cause of action. An application by Ramjiwan Misir - father of the plaintiff - who was impleaded as the second defendant, to be transposed as a petitioner was also rejected by the Subordinate Judge. The plaintiff and Ramjiwan Misir applied to the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad in the exercise of its revisional jurisdiction against the orders rejecting their respective petitions but without success. They have with special leave appealed to this Court against the orders passby the High Court.
(2.) The case set up by the plaintiff in his petition was briefly this. Maharaja Sir Man Singh holder of the Ajodhya Raj was a Taluqdar in lists I, II and V of the Oudh Estates Act 1 of 1869. He died in 1870 and the Raj devolved upon his daughter's son Maharaja Pratap Narain Singh, who died on November 9, 1906 leaving him surviving two widows - Suraj Kumari and Jagdamba Devi - and no lineal descendant. A will alleged to be executed by Maharaja Pratap Narain Singh on July 20, 1891 was set up but it was void and ineffective because, firstly, it was procured by undue influence, coercion an fraud practised upon the testator, and, secondly, it created a line of succession contrary to law. Accordingly on the death of Maharaja Pratap Narain Singh the Raj devolved upon Maharani Suraj Kumari - the senior widow - and on her death in 1927 upon Maharani Jagdamba Devi, and on the death of the latter on June 18, 1928 upon Ganga Dutt Misir, grandfather of the plaintiff. Ganga Dutt Misir died in 1942 and the estate devolved upon his son Ramjiwan and his grandson, the plaintiff as co-parceners in a Hindu joint family. Even if the will was valid and effective "the terms thereof along with Maharaja Pratap Singh's other acts and declarations" had the effect of taking the estate out of the purview of Act I of 1869 with the result that Maharani Jagdamba Devi enjoyed the property in suit with a life estate therein, and on her death on June 18, 1938 the entire property in suit vested in Ganga Dutt on whose death the plaintiff and defendant No. 2 became owners of the entire property in suit as their joint ancestral property". Defendant No. 1 - Dukh Haran Singh - claimed to be adopted as a son by Jagdamba Devi on February 12, 1909 but the claim was "utterly false, fictitious and untrue" for the reasons set out in the partition, and the Raj was in the wrongful possession of the first defendant - Dukh Haran Singh.
(3.) We plaintiff alleged that his father Ramjiwan Misir was "detained and confined" by the first defendant and was unable to join the plaintiff in the petition.;