S. 226(1) of the Government of India Act, 1935, does not bar a suit for declaration of title to property attached by the Income-tax Officer where the plaintiff is not a party who is in any way concerned with or who can in any way be affected by the orders of attachment.

FACTS :- The case of the plaintiff as set out in the plaint was that she was married to Banwarilal Ramswaroop, the son of a wealthy merchant of Delhi. At the time of her marriage ornaments of large value were presented to her by her relatives and these ornaments were her stridhan property. She also received some more ornaments at the time of the Maklava ceremony which took place about ten months after her marriage. When she left Bombay for Delhi after the Maklava ceremony she took away with her most of those ornaments. They remained with her in Delhi till February 1948 when she came to Bombay on account of some disturbances at Delhi and also because her father-in-law, who was suffering from tuberculosis, had asked her to go to Bombay for some time. She brought all her ornaments to Bombay and resided with her father and mother (defendants Nos. 4 and 5). Her uncle-in-law, Biharilal, accompanied her to Bombay, and he tried to secure for her a locker in a safe deposit vault in the locality of Kalbadevi. Being unable to secure a separate locker for herself the plaintiff deposited her ornaments in a locker which had already been hired by her father and which stood in the joint names of her father and her mother. The name of the plaintiff was added as a hirer of the locker on February 27, 1948, before she deposited the ornaments in the locker. The ornaments were kept in a wooden box and in a bundle and the key of the wooden box as also of the locker remained with the plaintiff. A list of the ornaments was prepared and was kept in the wooden box.

On August 23, 1948, the contents of the locker were attached by an order passed by the Collector of Bombay (defendant No. 3) under O. XXI. R. 46, of the Civil Procedure Code, and S. 46(2) of the Indian Income-tax Act, in pursuance of a certificate forwarded to him by the Income-tax Officer, C-IV Ward, Bombay. The order of attachment was in the nature of a prohibitory order directing the Bank of India not to permit anyone to open the locker and was in respect of a demand for a sum of Rs. 1,68,501 for income-tax assessment and penalty levied on defendant No. 4 for the assessment year 1943-44. A copy of the prohibitory order was served on defendant No. 4. The plaintiff thereupon applied to defendant No. 3 claiming the return of the ornaments in the locker. Correspondence ensued in the course of which defendant No. 3 called upon the plaintiff to prove by evidence her title to the ornaments. A meeting was held on October 15, 1948 by the Commissioner of Income-tax (defendant No. 2) when the solicitor for defendant No. 1 contended that the ornaments belonged to defendant No. 4 and that the plaintiffs claim was false and fraudulent. Defendant No. 3 thereupon passed an order directing the plaintiff to file a suit to prove her title to the ornaments. The present suit was accordingly filed on October 13, 1949, by the plaintiff against the defendants.

The plaintiff alleged that neither defendant No. 4 nor defendant No. 5 had any interest in any of the ornaments kept in the box and the bundle deposited in the locker, that the ornaments being hers were not liable to attachment for any income-tax liability of defendant No. 4, that the income-tax claim made by defendant No. 1 was made on behalf of defendant No. 1 and the attachment was levied by defendant No. 3 at the instance 6f the Income-tax officer, C-IV Ward, Bombay, and that officer was under defendant No. 2 and defendant No. 2 was responsible for the orders passed by officers under him. The plaintiff further alleged that both, defendants Nos. 2 and 3, were officers of defendant No. 1 and in respect of the attachment complained of they had acted in the course of their employment and in discharge of official duties and, therefore, defendant No. 1 was responsible for the attachment of the ornaments. Reliefs claimed by the plaintiff were purely of a declaratory nature, the declarations sought being that the ornaments in that box and bundle belonged