Judgment

KOSHAL, J.:- This appeal by special leave has arisen out of a suit brought by Smt. Punna, respondent No. 1, against the two appellants and respondent No. 2 for the issuance of a perpetual injunction restraining the three defendants from interfering with her right to recover her fathers share of six annas in a rupee in the offerings made at the sacred shrine of Shri Vaishno Devi Ji which is situated on the Trikutta Hills. The suit was decreed by the trial court whose judgment was upheld in first appeal by the District Judge in a second appeal by a learned Single Judge of the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and in a Letter Patent Appeal by a Full Bench of that Court. It is the judgment of the Full Bench (Which is dated the 18th of Jan. 1972) that is impugned before us:

2. The averments made in the plaint may be summarised thus. The plaintiff is the daughter of one Bagu who died in or about the year 1959. During his lifetime Bagu and the three defendants were entitled to receive the offerings made at the shrine of Shri Vaishno Devi Ji on certain days falling within every seventh Bikrami Year so that Bagu would have 6/16th share therein and the defendants collectively a similar share. After the death of the plaintiffs father the parties were entitled to receive the offerings in the shares abovementioned on every eighth day in the Bikrami year 2019, the plaintiff having succeeded to the share of her father both under the law of inheritance and by virtue of a will executed by him in her favour. The plaintiff had to resort to the suit as the defendants had started interfering with her right to collect her share of the offerings.

3. The defendants contested the suit. They challenged the will set up by the plaintiff as a forged one and further pleaded that only members of four subcastes namely, Khas Thakars, Drora Thakars, Manotra Thakars and Samnotra Brahmins were entitled to receive the offerings and that while Bagu was entitled to a share in the same, the plaintiff was not as she had lost her original sub-caste by marriage outside the four sub-castes mentioned above. The offerings, according to the defendants, were also not liable to devolve by inheritance or demise.

4. The findings arrived at by the trial court were these:

(1) On the death of a baridar (which expression, when literally translated, means turn-holder) belonging to any of the aforementioned sub-castes, his heirs inherited his right to receive offerings just as they inherited his other property.

(2) Under Sec. 4 of the Hindu Succession Act, any custom or usage inconsistent with the provisions of that Act becomes ineffective.

(3) Even under Sec. 6 of the Hindu Succession Act read with the Schedule appended thereto the property of Bagu would devolve on the plaintiff in case Bagu died intestate.

(4) Bagu executed a valid will in favour of the plaintiff devising to her the right to receive the offerings, apart from other properties.

(5) the plaintiff was entitled, in view of the above four findings to inherit the right to receive offerings not only by reason of the provision of Ss. 4 and 6 of the Hindu Succession Act, but also because of the will.

5. At the hearing of the Letters Patent Appeal by the Full Bench, the following four contentions were raised on behalf of the defendants:

(1) the chance of future worshipers making offerings to the deity is a mere possibility of the nature referred to in Cl. (a) of Sec. 6 of the T. P. Act and is not property which can be transferred or inherited.

(2) the right to receive offerings is not a transferable or heritable right.

(3) The provisions of the Hindu Succession Act do not apply to the case in hand.

(4) According to the custom governing the shrine of Shri Vaishno Devi Ji, only the abovementioned four sub-castes were entitled to share the offerings.

All these contentions were rejected by the Full Bench as untenable. In regard to the first of them the Full Bench followed Balmukund v. Tula Ram, AIR 1928 All 721, in which it was held