Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1952SC1; [1952]1SCR64
Das, J.1. This appeal has come up for hearing before us on transfer from the Privy Council. The appellant is the present holder of Taluk Kakwara which appertains to Mahalat Kharakpur. The respondents represent the Banaili Raj which has also acquired the Mahalat of Kharakpur. The respondents obtained a decree for Rs. 11,587.14. 6 against the appellant for arrears of rent and cess and applied for execution of their decree by the attachment and sale of Taluk Kakwara. On August 29, 1939, the appellant judgment debtor filed an objection under section 47 of the Code of Civil Procedure alleging that as Taluk Kakwara was held on Ghatwali tenure it could not be sold in execution of money decree. This objection was rather too wide, for all lands held on Ghatwali tenure were not necessarily inalienable. Indeed, in Kali Pershad Singh v. Anund Roy (1887) L.R. 15 I.A. 18; ILR. 15 Cal. 471 which related to the Ghatwali Mahal of Kharna within the Mahalat of Kharakpur the evidence clearly established a...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1952SC12; 18(1952)CLT45(SC); (1951)IIMLJ645(SC); [1952]1SCR28
Kania, C.J. 1. These are five companion appeals from the judgment of the High Court at Orissa, delivered on five petitions filed by the respondent in each of the appeal, to obtain from the Court a writ of mandamus and/or directions under article 226 of the Constitution of India. 2. Each of the respondents alleged that between 1941 and 1947 he had agreed to take from the Ruler of Keonjhar a mining lease and had entered into possession of the area. Some of the petitioner alleged that they had spent money on the development of the mines and installed machinery to work the same. It is however common ground that there was no registered lease in favour of any of the respondents before 1947. On the 14th December, 1947, the Ruler of Keonjhar entered into a merger agreement with the Dominion of India and as from the 1st January, 1948, the State was merged in the Dominion of India. After signing the merger agreement the Ruler gave registered leases on the 27th December, 1947, to the respondents ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1954SC4
Bose, J. 1. The facts of this case can be placed in short compass. The appellant Muthuswami has been convicted of the murder of Nachimuthu Goundan and sentenced to death. The evidence consists of three eye-witnesses and a retracted confession. The learned Additional Sessions Judge disbelieved two of the eye-witnesses, namely Hanifa (P. W. 2) and Ghouse (P. W. 5), and rejected the confession on the ground that it was not voluntary. But he believed the third eye-witness Jamal (P. W. 1) who he thought was corroborated by certain other evidence and based his conviction on that. He also convicted another accused Pongiannan, with whom we are not concerned, on the same evidence and sentenced them both to death.2. The High Court considered that P. W. 1, was as unreliable as the other two eye-witnesses and so refused to believe him. But they thought the confession had been wrongly rejected and, believing it to be voluntary, they upheld the conviction relying on the confession alone. They acquit...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1951SC477; [1952]1SCR116
Mukherja, J.1. This appeal, which was originally taken to the Judicial committee, on special leave, granted by an Order in Council dated August 2, 1946, now stands transferred to this by reason of the abolition of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council. It is directed against a judgment and decree of Division Bench of the Patna High Court dated March 17, 1944, affirming, on appeal, a decision of the Subordinate Judge of Purnea dated February 27, 1942. 2. The appellants before us are the first party defendants in a suit, commenced by the plaintiffs respondents, for enforcement of a simple mortgage bone, by sale of the mortgaged property. The trial Judge, while deciding all the other issues in favour of the plaintiffs, held on the evidence on the record, that the bond sued upon was not legally attested and hence could not rank as a mortgage bond. On this finding he refused to make a decree for sale of the mortgaged property on favour of the plaintiffs and passed a money decree, for the am...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1951SC469; (1952)54BOMLR122; [1952]1SCR43
Das, J 1. This is an appeal from the judgment of a Bench of the Bombay High Court (Sen and Dixit JJ.) delivered on February 2, 1947, in an appeal filed under section 18 of the Bombay City Land Revenue Act II of 1876 against the judgment of the Revenue Judge at Bombay delivered on October 27, 1942, in a suit filed by the respondents, the Municipal Corporation of the City of Bombay, and Madusudan Damodar Bhat, the then Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay, against the Collector of Bombay. 2. There is no substantial dispute as to the facts leading up to his litigation and they may be shortly stated. In 1865, the Government of Bombay, having decided to construct an Eastern Boulevard, called upon the Corporation of Justices of the Peace for the City of Bombay, the predecessor in title of the respondent Corporation, to remove its then existing fish and vegetable markets from the site required for the construction of the Boulevard. The then Municipal Commissioner Mr. Arthur Crawford,...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : (1951)IIMLJ683(SC); [1952]1SCR89
Patanjali Sastri, J.1. These petitions, which have been heard together, raise the common question whether the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, which was recently passed by the present provisional Parliament and purports to insert, inter alia, articles 31A and 31B in the Constitution of India is ultra vires and unconstitutional. 2. What led to that enactment is a matter of common knowledge. The political party now in power, commanding as it does a majority of votes in several State legislatures as well as in Parliament, carried out certain measures of agrarian reform in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh by enacting legislation which may compendiously be referred to as Zamindary Abolition Act. Certain zemindars, feeling themselves aggrieved, attacked the validity of those Acts in courts of law on the ground that they contravened the fundamental rights conferred on them by Part III of the Constitution. The High Court of Patna held that the Act passed in Bihar was unconstitu...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1951SC484; [1952]1SCR127
Chandrasekhara Aiyar, J.1. These two criminal appeal are from convictions of the appellants by the High Court at Calcutta. In the first case, leave to appeal to this court was granted by the High Court under article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution of India. In the second case, special leave to appeal was granted by this court under article 136(1) of the Constitution. The appeals were heard together, but as they are by different parties and the facts are different, it is desirable to have two separated judgments. 2. Criminal Appeal No. 7 of 1950. 3. The appellant, Joyal Agarwala, who was a salesman in a retail shop in Pulbazar in the district of Darjeeling in the State of West Bengal, was charged with having sold a piece of textile cloth at a price in excess of the controlled price. Fro this contravention of the provisions of clause 24 (1), of the Cotton Textiles Control Order, 1948, he was convicted by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Darjeeling under section 7 of the Essential Supplies ...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1951SC481; 1952CriLJ75; (1951)IIMLJ641(SC); [1952]1SCR18
Kania, C.J. 1. These are five companion appeals from the judgments of the High Court of East Punjab and the principal point argued before us is as to the legality of the detention of the appellants under the Preventive Detention Act on the ground that they are engaged in black- marketing in cotton piecegoods. 2. The Jullundur Wholesale Cloth' Syndicate was formed to work out the distribution of cloth under the Government of Punjab Control (Cloth) Order passed under the Essential Supplies Act. Certain persons who held licences as wholesale dealers in cloth formed themselves into a corporation and all cloth controlled by the Government was distributed in the district to the retail quoted holders through them. The Government allotted quotas to the retailers and orders were issued by the Government for giving each retailer certain bales under the distribution control. If some of the retail licence holders did not take delivery of the quotas allotted to them under the Notification of the 4t...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : AIR1951SC464; (1951)IIMLJ638(SC); [1952]1SCR11
Kania, C.J.1. This is an appeal from a judgment of the High Court at Bombay and it arises out of the opinion expressed by the High Court in respect of a question submitted to it by the Income-tax Tribunal. The material facts are these. The respondent is a textile mills company carrying on the business of manufacturing and selling textile goods. For the assessment years 1943-44 and 1944-45, covering the accounting periods ending with the calendar years 1941, 1942 and 1943, the respondent claimed the expenditure incurred by it in registering for the first time its trade marks which were not in use prior to the 25th February, 1937, as revenue expenditure and an allowable deduction out of its income for the said periods, under section 1092) (xv) of the Indian Income tax Act. Following the decision of the Bombay High Court in Commissioner of Income-tax, Bombay v. The Century Spinning and Weaving and : [1947]15ITR105(Bom) , the Tribunal allowed the claim of the assessee. At the desire of the...
Tag this Judgment!Court : Supreme Court of India
Reported in : [1951]20ITR475(SC)
KANIA, C.J. - This is an appeal from a judgment of the High Court at Bombay and it arises out of the opinion expressed by the High Court in respect of a question submitted to it by the Income-tax Tribunal. The material facts are these. The respondent is a textile mills company carrying on bossiness of manufacturing and selling textile goods. For the assessment year 1943-44 and 1944-45, covering the accounting periods ending with the calendar years 1941, 1942 and 1943, the respondent claimed the expenditure incurred by it in registering for the first time its trade marks which were not in use prior to the 25th February, 1937, as revenue expenditure and an allowable deduction out of its income for the said periods, under Section 10(2)(xv) of the Indian Income-tax Act. Following the decision of the Bombay High Court in commissioner of Income-tax, Bombay v. The Century, Spinning, Weaving and ., the Tribunal allowed the claim of the assessee. At the desire of the appellant, the Tribunal sub...
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