Case: Sahu Madho Das And Others Vs. Pandit Mukand Ram And Another(And Connected Appeal)

The plaintiff, Mukand Ram, is common to all four cases. He sues in each suit as the reversioner to one Pandit Nanak Chand who was his maternal grandfather. The family tree is as below :Nanak Chand d. 23-7-56W : Mst. Pato. d. Jan. 1875.-----|------------------------|-----------------------------|-----------Mst. Maha Devi Mst. Durga Devi Mst. Har Devid. 1912 d. 1888 d. 10-9-19

Court's reasoning:
Now it is true that the so-called will of 1864 does not make provision for the grandsons, nor does it expressly confer an absolute estate on the legatees, but the witness is illiterate and had to depend on what he was told about the contends and meaning of the document, and what we have to test is the truth of his assertion that the plaintiff Mukand Ram and Kanhaiya Lal, and other members of the family, told him that Mst. Pato had given the property to her daughters and grandsons. If they told him this, as he says they did, then it operates as an admission against Mukand Ram and shifts the burden of proof to him because he was one of the persons who made the statement. The statements made by the others are not relevant except in so far as they prove the conduct of the family.The plaintiff (P.W. 11 in C.A. 91/50) admits that Mst. Pato divided the estate but says that it was only for convenience of management and that neither she nor her daughters had, or pretended to have, anything more than a life estate. He denies that there was any gift or family arrangement. But he had to admit that the grandsons also got properties at the same time. His explanation is that it was for the purposes of "shradh" and pilgrimage to Gaya and he says that though they were given possession they were not thealso admits that there was a division and separate possession from 1876. He says that it was for convenience of management and says that it was after Patos death, but in view of the mass of evidence that we have just analysed, we think it far more likely that he told Shyam Lal just what Shyam Lal says he did. After all, he was borrowing money from Shyam Lal on each of these occasions; so there is every reason to believe that he would have told Shyam Lal what he had so repeatedly asserted to his other transferees. We accordingly believe Shyamaccordingly hold that, whether the property belonged to Pato or to Nanak Chand, Pato claimed an absolute right which the daughters acknowledged, and in return they and their sons were given separate and absolute estates in separate portions of the propertyis well settled that a compromise or family arrangement is based on the assumption that there is an antecedent title of some sort in the parties and the agreement acknowledges and defines what that title is, each party relinquishing all claims to property other than that falling to his share and recognising the right of the others, as they had previously asserted it, to the portions allotted to them respectively. That explains why no conveyance is required in these cases to pass the title from the one in whom it resides to the person receiving it under the family arrangement. It is assumed that the title claimed by the person receiving the property under the arrangement had always resided in him or her so far as the property falling to his or her share is concerned and therefore no conveyance is necessary. But, in our opinion, the principle can be carried further and so strongly do the Courts lean in favour or family arrangements that bring about harmony in a family and do justice to its various members and avoid, in anticipation, future disputes which might ruin them all, that we have no hesitation in taking the next step (fraud apart) and upholding an arrangement under which one set of members abandons all claim to all title and interest in all the properties in dispute and acknowledges that the sole and absolute title to all the properties resides in only one of their number (provided he or she had claimed the whole and made such an assertion of title) and are content to take such properties as are assigned to their shares as gifts pure and simple from him or her, or as a conveyance for consideration when consideration isfar as they are concerned, what they received were gifts pure and simple and the only assent that could be inferred from mere acceptance of the gift and nothing more would be assent to that particular gift and not assent to the gifts similarly made to others; and for thisC.A. 94/50 there is, in addition, a direct personal estoppel against the plaintiff. The transfers that are challenged there are sales of 23-9-18 and 25-11-19 made by two of the grandsons, one personally and the other by the guardian, but the relevant dates for the purposes of the estoppel are later because the representation in this case was not made to the immediate transferees but to the first defendant who obtained title to the properties at a later date, in one case by a sale from the immediate transferee, in the other by pre-emption. But the exact dates do not matter because the representation to the first defendants purchases. It was made by Kanhaiya Lal and Mukand Ram as well as by other members of the family. We have already referred to the first defendantswe need not elaborate this further because of the other principle which, in our opinion, is sufficient to dispose of both the present cases.