1. The Palai Central Bank Limited (in liquidation) stopped business on the evening of the 8th August 1960 on the appointment of a provisional liquidator. Before that, the various offices of the bank had, in the ordinary course, issued demand drafts, most of them on other offices of the bank, but a few on other banks with whom it had agency arrangements. These applications are by the holders of such drafts who were unable to present them and obtain payment before the bank closed down and who therefore submitted proofs to the liquidator claiming payment in full on the ground that the bank was only an agency employed by them for the transmission of money from one place to another and payable at the other end to their nominee or his order. Therefore, their relationship with the bank was not that of an ordinary debtor and creditor, but something more; and the bank held the money paid by them for obtaining the draft in a fiduciary capacity. The liquidator however held that the relationship was that of an ordinary debtor and creditor and nothing more, and, denying the applicants the preferential payment they claimed, ranked them with the ordinary creditors. Hence these applica