Importance of following procedural requirements and conducting a careful judicial enquiry in lunacy proceedings.

1. This appeal under S.83 of the Indian Lunacy Act (Central Act IV of 1912) is directed against the order of the District Court, Ernakulam, declaring Sri Manayath Thommen Antony as a person of unsound mind incapable of managing his affairs and appointing his brother's widow Mrs. Tresa Xavier as his custodian and Manager of his properties.

2. Mrs. Tresa Xavier to be referred hereafter as the petitioner filed an application under S.62 and 63 of the Act alleging that the second respondent herein, Manayath Thommen Antony, has been insane for several years, that his brother was appointed as a guardian in an earlier lunacy proceedings, Lunacy O.P. No.1 of 1962, that he was under the care of his brother till he died on 12-1-1979 and thereafter the second respondent has been under the custody and care of the petitioner. It was, therefore, necessary to appoint a guardian for him to manage his person and his properties. The petition also stated that there were no close relations of the alleged lunatic.

3. On this application the lower court ordered notice to the second respondent, the alleged lunatic. The notice could not be served on him as reported by the process Server and it was accepted by the petitioner herself. He was examined by a doctor who submitted a report. The respondent was also questioned by the lower Court.

4. The appellant herein, the respondent's nephew, got himself impleaded 'in the proceedings before the court below. He denied the factum of insanity, disputed the claim for appointment of a custodian or Manager and asserted that he was ignorant of the earlier lunacy proceedings and that in any case, they were not valid as they were obtained by mis-representation and fraud. The court below found that the 2nd respondent is a lunatic and appointed the petitioner as his custodian and Manager of his properties.

5. The Act defines lunatic in S.3(5) thus: "Lunatic means an idiot or person of unsound mind."

Lunatic under the Act refers to a state of mind, defective and undeveloped, as in the case of an idiot, or deranged or disordered and thus abnormal and out of equilibrium as in unsoundness of mind.

6. In Halsbury's Laws of England, Second Edition, Vol. 21, the expression "persons of unsound mind" has been defined as follows:

"Unsoundness of mind, or as it is sometimes styled lunacy or insanity, may be shortly defined as a defect of reason, consisting either in its total or partial absence or in its perturbation. The perturbation or absence of reason which constitutes insanity is an abnormal state of the mind of a man judged by a standard which recognises a normal standard of rationality and pronounces that man to be insane. Sanity exists when the brain and the nervous system are in such a condition that the mental functions of feeling and knowing, emotion, and of willing, can be performed in their regular and usual manner. Insanity means a state in which one or more of the above named mental functions is or are performed in an abnormal way or not performed at all by reason of some disease of the brain or nervous system. The question whether any man is of unsound mind can only be decided by reference to the ordinary standard of human intelligence; and when a case comes before a court it is the duty of the court to decide the question of mental capacity, and expert evidence does not relieve it from the obligation to form an independent opinion."

7. In Sonabati Devi v. Narayan Chandra Upadhya (AIR. 1935 Pat. 423) Courtney Terrell, C. J., stated thus:

"Now no person can have direct experience of the mind of another and the proper test of insanity is conduct. A person might conceivably have all kinds of mental unsoundness; he might have all kinds of delusions, but if his conduct remains normal, there should be no power under the Lunacy Act to deal with him because the law of Lunacy deals with conduct and the proper test for insanity is not the beliefs that the person concerned may entertain but the conduct exhibited by that