Judgment

AYYANGAR, J.; This appeal by special leave raises for consideration an interesting but, by no means, easy question of Hindu Law as regards the rights of a disqualified heir and in particular whether a disqualified heir who, in this case, was congenitally a deaf-mute becomes by birth a coparcener with his father, so that the ancestral family properties vest in him as sole surviving copareener, on the death of his father without other male issue.

2. The facts of the case are not very material but are being set out merely to appreciate how the question arose. One Pappachari died in 1928, leaving behind him his widow Sornammal, four daughters and a deaf-mute son Moogi Puttuswami. This son married Kamalammal who is the third defendant in the suit out of which the appeal arises. Puttuswami died in 1949 leaving behind him his widow Kamalammal and a minor daughter-Subbulakshmi, the fourth defendant in the suit. It is now common ground that the properties which are now in dispute between the widow of Pappachart who brought the suit and the wife and daughter of Puttuswami who contested their claim, were ancestral in the hands of Pappachari. Soon after the death of Pappachari his widow