Hari Lal Agrawal, J.

1. -this is an appeal by some of the defendants whose application under Order IX, Rule 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure for setting aside an ex parte decree passed against them on 17-10-1977 in Title Suit no.94 of 1975 by the Subordinate Judge, Aurangabad, has failed.

2. Some necessary facts may briefly be stated. The plaintiff-respondents had instituted the suit for a declaration that they were the statutory tenants of the suit lands and the defendants had no right or interest in the same. They had claimed some further reliefs, such as partition injunction etc. Attempts to serve summonses on the defendant were made by all the known procedures, namely (1)ordinary way of service of summonses, (2) service by registered cards, which returned back with endorsement of refusal, and then (3) by publication in the official gazette When the defendants did not appear in spite of all these steps the suit was taken up ex parte and was decreed on 17-10-1977.

3. On 23-1-1978 an application under Rule 13 of Order IX read with section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure was filed by the appellants alleging that neither the summonses nor the registered cards were served upon them and that the service reports were collusive. According to their further case, they learnt of the ex parte decree for the first time on 15-1-1978 and accordingly the aforesaid application was filed, after making some enquiries on 23-1-78, for setting aside the ex parte decree.

4. Both the parties adduced oral as well as documentry evidence in suppoit of their respective cases and on those evidences the following findings have been recorded by the trial court; (1) Appellant Nos 1, 2 and 4 were residing at a place different from that as shown in the plaint (2) opposite party no.1, one of the plaintiffs who examined himself PW no.3 admitted that appellant no.1 lived at Bharkunda for about 9-10 years and appellant no.4 also lived there since about 5-6 years no.2 lived at Bhurkunda for the last it is not disputed that no process was directed at the address of the aforesaid appellants and all the processes were issued at the address of their village where, of course, appellant no.3 resided. The trial court, however, refused to take into account the place of residence of the aforesa. d appellants which was entirely different from the place where the processes were directed, on the ground that one of their family members, namely, appellant no 3 lived there who had received one of the cards personally and, therefore, all the other appellants must be deemed to have derived knowledge of the suit on that account much before the date of the decree in question. It has come in evidence that appellant no 3 had refused to receive either the summonses or the registered cards of the other defendants appellants. The trial court rejected the application for setting aside, the ex pane decree on the sole ground that the appellants "had knowledge of the suit earlier seven prior to the date of the ex parte decre" and, therefore the said application having not been filed within thirty days as contemplated under Article 123 of the Limitation Act, was barred by limitation and could not be maintained

5. Mr Janeshwar Singh, appearing on behalf of the appellants, challenged the order of the trial court and contended that inasmuch as there being a clear finding that the processes were not directed to some of the appellants, there was no service of the summonses in the eye of law and even assuming that one of the defendant-appellants had knowledge of the suit, it could not be held that the other appellants would also he deemed to have the some knowledge and they are bound by the same. In this connection a copy of the Gazette notification which was issued in this case, was also produced before me to show that in the said notification no date for appearance of the defendants was fixed.

6. In my opinion, the contentions are well founded and must succeed. This Court in the cas