- (1.) THIS is a defendant' s appeal arising out of a suit for a declaration that the plaintiff was the owner of the premises in suit and the landlord of the defendant No. 1. He further prayed for a decree of eviction against the defendant No. 1 and the recovery of rent, damages and mesne profits from him. Plaintiff' s case was that defendant No. 2 Sita Ram was the owner of the house in suit. He sold it to the plaintiff for a sum of Rs. 8,500 under a registered sale-deed dated 14-8-1968. Defendant No. 1 was Sita Ram' s tenant. He was informed of the sale-deed and that he was the plaintiff' s tenant thereafter. He, however, denied Sita Rani' s title as also of the plaintiff' s to the property and asserted a hostile title in himself. He did not pay any rent to the plaintiff since 14-8-1968. He was served with a composite notice of demand and termination of tenancy dated 22-4-1969. He paid no heed to it and neither paid any rent nor vacated the premises instead claimed to be the owner of the property. Hence the suit.
(2.) DEFENDANT No. 2, Sita Ram supported the plaintiff' s claim and alleged that the house in suit was an ancestral property and his grandfather was the owner of it along with few others. By a partition in the family in the year 1957 the house in suit fell to his share and he became its owner. He sold it to the plaintiff under the sale-deed dated 14-8-1968 and the plaintiff consequently became its owner thereafter. It was alleged that the defendant No. 1 and his ancestors had been occupying the premises as tenants, and the defendant No. 1 was his tenant. After the transfer of the property in favour of the plaintiff he became the plaintiff' s tenant and was bound to treat the plaintiff as his landlord. The suit was contested by the defendant No. 1 on the allegations that the house in suit was the ancestral house of the defendant, that it never belonged to Sita Ram or his ancestors, that the plaintiff did not acquire any title to it under the sale-deed executed by Sita Ram in his favour. It was alleged that the house in suit existed on plot No. 906 which was acquired by the defendant' s ancestors from the Annapur Estate and the house was constructed on it after demolishing a Kachha construction. It accordingly belonged to the contesting defendant and no relationship of landlord and tenant existed between the parties. Boundaries of the house shown in the plaint were also challenged as incorrect. The trial court dismissed the suit on the findings that Sita Ram was not the owner of the house and the plaintiff had acquired no title to it under the sale-deed in his favour. It further found that defendant No. 1 was the owner, in possession of it in his own right and not as a tenant.
(3.) ON appeal the lower appellate court reversed that decree and has decreed the suit holding that the house belonged to Sita Ram and the plaintiff became its owner under the sale-deed in his favour. The defendant was found to be a tenant of Sita Ram and thereafter of the plaintiff and liable to ejectment by the suit on termination of his tenancy by a valid notice under S. 106 of the T. P. Act. The lower appellate court found that the disputed house fell in a row of properties belonging to Sita Ram' s ancestor. Its situation, location and structure indicated that it and the other properties were built by one person. It further found that from the evidence on record it was established that it was built by Sita Ram' s grandfather. It was further found that there was a partition in the family of Sita Ram in 1957 and by an award dated 6-4-57 Ext. 17 the disputed house fell in his share. The house thereafter was recorded in the records of the Town Area Dildarnagar as the house of Sita Ram with Hari Lal as its tenant at a monthly rent of Rs. 10. The entries continued from 1958 to 1968. They were found to be genuine and reliable by the court below. As to a rent note Ext. 15 alleged to have been executed by Hari Lal the learned Judge agreed with the trial court that it was forged. But he held that this by itself did not falsify the plaintiff' s case that Sita Ram was the owner of the house and the defendant its tenant. On the basis of a mass of evidence on record including transactions in the nature of alienations and litigations having a bearing on the question of title, coupled with the oral evidence produced the learned Judge came to the conclusion that Sita Ram was the owner of the suit property. He referred to the plaint in suit No. 193 of 1943 filed by the Karta of Sita Ram' s joint family for the ejectment of a tenant of an adjoining house. The house in dispute was mentioned as the western boundary of that house. In two sale-deeds executed by Sita Ram dated 30-8-1963 and 2-4-1968, the house in dispute was shown as the boundary of the properties sold and as belonging to Sita Ram, Award Ext. 17 by which the house in dispute along with five shops was allotted to Sita Ram in a partition in the family was relied upon to prove Sita Ram' s symbolical possession as owner over this property. Though the document was found to be requiring registration and it was not registered, it was found admissible for the collateral purpose of proving the nature of Sita Ram' s possession over the property in dispute. The learned Judge then relied on an application of the appellant to the Chairman, Town Area, Ext. 3, that he was a tenant of the premises at a monthly rent of Rs. 10 and not Rs. 15. This according to the learned Judge was an admission of the appellant that he was a tenant of the premises. Reliance was also placed on an application of the defendant' s son Ram Murat Ext. 9 to the District Magistrate, which stated that his father who was a tenant of the house in dispute was being harassed by Sita Ram the owner.;