A Letters Patent Appeal abates if one of the defendants dies and his legal representatives are not brought on record. A decree passed against a dead person is a nullity.

P. RAMAKRISHNAM RAJU, J.

( 1 ) THE question involved in this Letters Patent Appeal is, whether a Division bench hearing the Letters Patent Appeal can set aside the Judgment and remand the matter to the learned single Judge to dispose of the appeal which is the subject-matter of the L. P. A. solely for the purpose of enabling the appellants to bring the legal representatives of one of the respondents on record and to dispose of the appeal afresh.

( 2 ) THE facts which give rise to this L. P. A. are briefly stated hereunder. The respondent claiming to be the Mutuvalli of the Masjid-e-Kalam of Musheerabad, bholakpur village, Bakaram Taluq and Urban District, Hyderabad, filed o. S. No. 31 of 1969 on the file of the IV Additional Judge, City Civil Court, hyderabad against the appellant Nos. 1 to 4. Since appellant Nos. 1 to 4 died, appellant Nos. 5 to 11 were brought on record. The plaintiff s case is that the plaint schedule property which is an extent of 3150 sq. yards in Survey no. 247/1 of Bakaram village is a service Inam in respect of the said Masjid and he is the Inamdar. Originally, the first defendant occupied an extent of 1939 sq. yards, but later he occupied the adjacent land also making the total to 3150 sq. yards. As the first defendant has stated that the land is in occupation of all the four defendants, the plaintiff filed the suit against all the defendants for possession together with mesne profits and costs. The third defendant filed written statement contending that only an extent of 1932 sq. yards of site was in their occupation being the land granted by late Haji. Mohd. Vazir AH to his late brother Mohd. Abdulla Shareef covered by three plots bearing Nos. 18,22 and 28. Their brother was the owner of the said land on payment of Nazool quit rent at the rate of six pies per sq. yard per annum as per registered Nuzulnama dated 9th Thir, 1352 F. It is also their case that their brother Abdulla Shareef constructed a tiled house in one of the said plots and obtained Municipal number also after paying the compound fee. Abdulla Shareef died in 1958 leaving the four brothers, his widow and two sisters. His widow and another brother, Mohd. Adam Shareef died leaving three brothers and two sisters.

( 3 ) THEY resisted the suit among other grounds that the suit is not maintainable since the plaintiff is not Mutuvalli, The trial Courtaccepted this contention and dismissed the suit. The respondent filed C. C. C. A. 74 /77. It is the admitted case that the second defendant by name Mohd. Yousuf Shareef died on 21-9-1980 while C. C. C. A. 74/77 filed by the respondent was pending. It is also admitted that the legal representatives of the said second defendant were notbrought on record. However, the learned single Judge allowed the appeal and decreed the suit holding that the first respondent-plaintiff is the Mutuvalli. Aggrieved by the said decree and judgment, the surviving defendants and some legal representatives of the other defendants filed this Letters Patent Appeal.

( 4 ) SRI R. Venugopal Reddy, the learned Senior Advocate appearing for the appellants vehemently contended that the decree passed by the learned single judge is a nullity inasmuch as the legal representatives were not brought on record after the death of the second respondent and so, the whole appeal before the learned single Judge abated. He relied upon a decision reported in State of Hyderabad vs. Mohammed Afzal, wherein a Division Bench of this Court held as follows:-"the principle that every joint owner of the land is the owner of every cent of the land is well known and in the circumstances, it is obvious that the compensation awarded would be to apply this analogy for each party, so that if any one of the owners is absent or is not a party or ceased to be a parry, the compensation for that piece would not represent the compensation to that parcel of the land. A perusal of the decree passed by the District Judge would show that the compensation was awarde

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