Lord Blanesburgh. -

The short ques tion upon this appeal was whether the learned Judges of the High Court of Judi cature at Allahabad were justified in ordering, as they did on the 28th May 1923, that a written compromise of all questions in the suit, as between the appellant and the two respondents, should be filed and proceeded with. In making this order the High Court differed from the Subordinate Judge at Muzaffarnagar, who, on the 1st February 1922, had refused to pass such a decree.

Many questions were canvassed in the Courts in India. The issue, however, as presented to the Board, had become a narrow one. The facts on which it depends lie in a small compass.

The respondent Chaudhri Ghanshiam Singh is a Hindu of position. Amongst the properties with which he had appa rently dealt as his own were two villages : mauza Dudhli and mauza Barsu. These he had purported to mort gage with possession to the appellant Saiyid Mehdi Ali Khan. He had also granted a mortgage over mauza Barsu to one Lala Ghokal Chand. It is not necessary for present purposes to detail the mortgages over other property granted by Ghanshiam to other creditors and particularized in the plaint in this suit. It suffices to say that, as a result of his borrowing transactions, Ghanshiam had, in the early part of 1920, become so gravely embarrassed that in May of that year the appellant instituted against him in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Meerut a suit to enforce his security over the two villages named. What defences were or would have been raised therein by Ghanshiam their Lord ships do not know, because further pro gress apparently ceased as the result of the institution of this suit by the res pondent Kunwar Bharat Singh in the circumstances now to be stated.

Kunwar Bharat Singh claims to be the adopted son of Ghanshiam, and, as mem ber of the joint Hindu family so consti tuted, to be joint with his adoptive father in, inter, alia, the two villages above referred to. In that character he applied in Saiyid Mehdi Ali' suit for leave to intervene, alleging that the mortgages of family properties made by Ghanshiam were not made for legal necessity and were not binding upon him. His posi tion as adopted son of Ghanshiam was at once challenged by Saiyid Mehdi Ali as well as by Ghanshiam' other mort gage creditors, and in the result his application for leave to intervene in the suit was refused, and he was informed that his rights must be asserted in sepa rate proceedings.

Thus it was that the present suit was commenced by Bharat Singh on the 20th August 1920, and since its institution no more has apparently been heard of the appellant' earlier suit. This is not sur prising when the wide scope of the pres ent suit is regarded. To it all the mortgagees to whom Ghanshiam had purported to grant security and, in parti cular, Saiyid Mehdi Ali Khan and Gokal Ghand, are made defendants. Ghanshiam also is joined as a defendant. By his plaint the plaintiff, Kunwar Bharat Singh seeks a declaration as to his adop tion by Ghanshiam, and he claims that none of the mortgages of family property made by Ghanshiam were made for legal necessity and that they are none of them binding on the family. On the 23rd December 1920 a written statement by the present appellant Saiyid Mehdi Ali was delivered, in which the allegations of the plaintiff are challenged seriatim, and the appellant sets up that there is due to him in respect of his mortgage upon mauza Barsu a sum of Rs. 1,00,250, of which full particulars are given in the pleading. It is clear to their Lord ships on a perusal of this written state ment, that it was the purpose, and the laudable purpose, of the appellant to have determined in the present proceedings all questions as to his mortgage claims whe ther as against Bharat Singh or as against Ghanshiam Singh, and it is these questions which are the subject of the compromise now in question.

That compromise was brought about by the good offices of Mr. Marsh, the Collec