SUBBU NAIDU AND ORS. Vs. VARADARAJULU NAIDU AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal brought by defendants 1, 4 and 5 from a preliminary decree for partition and accounts passed by the District Court of North Arcot. The suit was originally brought by the first respondent in the Court of the District Munsiff at Arni but as the value of the properties involved was found to be beyond the pecuniary jurisdiction of that Court the plaint was returned to be presented to the proper Court and was later filed in the Court of the Subordinate Judge at Vellore from where it was transferred to the District Court.

(2.) THE relationship of the parties to one another will appear from the following genealogical table:

(3.) IT was the plaintiff's case as disclosed in his plaint and in his evidence that the properties at Oorkudi alone were divided provisionally in 1928 as the third defendant was running into debts and it was thought desirable, in order to avoid trouble with his creditors, that the family properties should appear to have been divided, and that the family money lending transactions standing in the name of the first defendant and the properties purchased from the maternal uncle of the brothers should appear to have become the exclusive properties of the first defindant. When, however an attempt was made to bring into existence a document to that effect, the plaintiff and some others did not agree and the attempt was dropped. Thereafter in 1930, the provisional division of the Oorkudi properties was confirmed and some of the outstandings were also divided between the parties, the other Immovable properties and outstandings of the business being continued as joint family properties in the management of the first defendant on the understanding that he should account for these properties and that they should be divided after the disputes relating to the debts incurred by the third defendant were settled once and for all. After the third defendant obtained his discharge in 1937, the plaintiff demanded his share of the properties and outstandings which remained undivided and also of the properties subsequently acquired by the first defendant with the aid of family moneys, but failing to get satisfaction brought the present suit. Defendants 2, 3 and 7 supported the plaintiff and claimed that their shares also in the suit properties should be separated and given to them.