MEARS, CJ and LINDSAY, J. – This is the appeal of the plaintiffs who had instituted a suit as
reversioners of one Ram Charan for the possession of 2 bighas of land. In 1884 Ram Charan appears to
have been in difficulties and he had a 9-pie odd share in a certain village. He executed a sale-deed which
has had to be construed in all the Courts and on the proper construction of that sale-deed the rights of the
parties depend. The plaintiffs are the reversioners, but the defendants are the purchasers of whatever rights
the vendee had. The real point is whether the sale was an out-and-out sale of the 9-pie odd share or
whether it was a sale by the vendor of the 9-pie odd share minus the 2 bighas now in dispute. The
document lies before us and it starts by Ram Charan stating that he had a 9-pie 3-kauri 2-dant zamindari
share in the property and then, after usual formal parts, says that he has absolutely sold, with the exception
of 2 bighas of nankar land numbered as below (1460), the entire property. Pausing there and putting the
sale in the plainest possible terms it was a sale of the 9-pie odd share minus the 2 bighas specifically
numbered. At a later portion of the deed he says:
Let this be known that the 2 bighas of nankar land which I have excluded from the sale shall remain in
my possession for life and after my death in the possession of my aulad khas without payment of rent
or Government revenue. I or my lineal descendants have no right to transfer the property excluded
either permanently or temporarily. If none of my lineal descendants is alive in my family then the said
land shall be declared to be the own property of the vendee and his heirs and the persons of my family
shall have no claim to the same.
It remains only to notice one further reference to this land. In the detail we find the share sold, viz. 9-
pie 3-kauri 2-dant nankar land excluding the 2 bighas No. 1460. The construction that we put upon the
passages that we have read is that the vendee got on the 12th of February 1884, the date of the sale, the 9-
pie odd share with No. 1460, the 2 bighas definitely excluded, but that they had a possibility of becoming
its owners at a future date provided that provision was one which the law would recognize. We can see in
the document no indication whatever of the vendees having acquired the whole of the property in the
whole of the land including the two bighas. What we do find is an acquisition of the whole of the 9-pie odd
share except that particular area of 2 bighas numbered 1460. Now if that be so, what is the position when a
contest arises between the nearest reversioners and the successors of the vendees? The position was that
Ram Charan having died, he was succeeded by his son Mauzzam Ram, who in turn died childless in 1918,
and therefore these 2 bighas of land would as it happened, if there was no law to the contrary, become the
property of the vendees within a life or lives in being and twenty-one years after. But the fact that it
happened to fall in within the legal limitation is not the test which is to be applied to these cases. What you
have to see is whether the event can be postponed to beyond the period of a life or lives in being and 21
years after and not what in fact happened. Now applying that test it is perfectly evident that these 2 bighas
of nankar land might have remained with the lineal descendants of Ram Charan for 100 or 200 years, and
that being so, we are of opinion that this was a condition repugnant to the law, and being so repugnant to
the law the defendants could not set up this document on which they rely as entitling them to possession of
the property. We are, therefore, of opinion that the plaintiffs were right in bringing this action and that the
decision of the learned Judge of this Court must be set aside and the decree of the first appellate Court
which confirmed the judgment of the Munsif must be restored with costs and fees in this Court on the
higher scale.
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