Viscount Haldane. -

This is an ap peal from the Court of the Judicial Com missioner in Baluchistan. The appellants are minors and are the sons of one Lala Sundar Dass, who died in October, 1921. There was a claim made by the respon dent against the deceased on 24th March, 1921, before H. M. Consul for Sistan in Persia. After the death of Lala Sundar Dass the Consul transmitted the claim to the Political Agent at Quetta, which is in Baluchistan. The case stood over until a guardian to the sons had been appointed. This appears to have been directed by order made by the Political Agent at Quetta. On 7th July, 1922, Mustapha Khushal Devi, the mother of the two sons, was formally appointed guardian of the property and persons of the two minor sons by the Senior Sub-Judge of the Gujrat district of the Punjab, where the sons were resident. The guardian repudiated liability for the claim, and on 23rd November, 1922, a plaint was lodged in the District Court at Quetta by the respondent against the sons and the mother as their guardian.

The circumstances out of which the claim arose were these : The respon dent, who was plaintiff, alleged that he and the deceased Sundar Dass, were rival transport contractors to the British Gov ernment in connexion with certain military operations carried out in Persia by a force known as the Eastern Persian Cordon in 1919 and 1920. The act com plained of was that Sundar Dass had im properly got away from the respondent a large number of camels controlled by the respondent for the purposes of his contract. It was not disputed that this wrong, if it was committed, took place in Persian territory between the months of January and the end of October, 1920. These allegations were sufficiently precise to define the fashion in which the camels were taken away, assuming that they were so taken. But it is clear from what has been alleged that each of the two contractors for the provision of transport carried out their contracts in part at least by sub-contracts with jama dars, who hired camels locally from their particular owners and supplied them for use to the contractors. If so, and if the claim was well founded, the real com plaint was that the late Sundar Dass bad improperly enticed the jamadars of the respondent into breaking their contracts by putting the animals which they had contracted to supply to him at the disposition of Sundar Dass himself. In the plaint there are other allegations of direct seizure of the respondent's camels, and also of an agreement made under Government orders to pay the amount of the loss to the plaintiff due for wrong done. No particulars of such direct seizure or of such an agreement appear to have been brought before the Court, and their Lordships think that the real case set up by the plaintiff was probably one of enticing the jamadars into break ing their contracts with the plaintiff.

The claim was the subject in the first instance, of complaint, on 29th Novem ber, 1919, to the British Consul at Sistan against the conduct of Sundar Dass, and subsequently in a letter of 24th March 1921, the respondent requested the Consul to recover for him from the latter the amount of his loss. The Consul was a judicial as well as an executive officer, and it was open to the respondent to have instituted proper proceedings in the Consular Court for recovery of the amount. This he did not do. The Consul, on 28th November 1921, reported the claim to the Political Agent at Quetta, who said that nothing could be done there until a guardian of the pro perty of the deceased Sundar Dass had been appointed. This, as already stated, was subsequently accomplished.

Their Lordships have examined the documents relating to what took place in Sistan, and they are of opinion that no legal proceedings were taken in the Consular Court there or any where until the case was launched in Quetta. The wrong, if committed, was probably committed in Persia, and the Consular Court for the district of Sistan would have