Modi, J.—This is a first appeal by the defendants Badhava Singh and Suhava Singh in a suit for damages for breach of contract for sale of land.

2. On 25th July, 1949, the defendants had entered into an agreement with the plaintiffs Charan Singh and Chanan Singh by which the former agreed to sell to the latter 2 squares of land Nos. 1and 7, measuring 50 bighas in chak 53 G.V., Tehsil Anoopgarh for a sum of Rs. 16,000/- and the veendes paid a sum of Rs. 200/- by way of earnest money on the same date. The sale was to be completed on or before the 15th of December, 1949, when the balance of the purchase money was to be paid by the vendees. It was also agreed between the part is that they would share the cost of registration, stamp paper and certain other necessary charges half and half A further stipulation was that if the defendant-vendors failed to complete the sale, they would be liable to refund the earnest money and in addition to pay a sum of Rs. 4000/-as damages for breach of contract, and it was similarly provided that if the vendees failed to complete the sale, they would be liable to forfeiture of this earnest money and to pay a further sum of Rs. 2000/- as damages for breach of contract. Some ten days before the final date for the completion of the sale, the defendants sold the land in question to Sohan Singh and others and executed a sale-deed in their favour on the 5th December, 1949. As the plaintiffs had come to know of the sale by the defendants in favour of the third party, they sent a telegraphic protest to the defendants and also made an application before the Registrar asking for postponement of the registration of the sale-deed on the very day, that is, 5th December, 1949, but the Registrar refused to the accede to the request of the vendees, and the document was registered. The plaintiffs, therefore, instituted the suit out of which the present appeal has arisen, on 6th December, 1949, claiming the refund of Rs. 2000/- in lieu of the earnest money and the stipulated sum of Rs. 4000/- as damages. The defendants admitted having executed the agreement Ex. P-l dated 25th July, 1949, but resisted the suit on two grounds; firstly, that the contract for sale had been broken by the plaintiffs inasmuch as they had refused to pay half the share of the expenses which were required for the completion of the sale and for obtaining the permission of the authorities concerned to the sale which was rendered necessary on account of the circumstance that the defendants were Sikh Jats and the plaintiffs Seni Jats, and a sale from the one to the other required permission of competent authority before it could be validly effected. In the second place, the defendants contended that the damages asked for by the plaintiffs were in the nature of a penalty and, were, therefore, illegal. The trial court decreed the plaintiffs suit for a sum of Rs. 6000/-. Its findings are (1) that the defendants and not the plaintiffs were responsible for the breach of the contract for sale, (2) that no permission was necessary for the completion of the sale as non was required under any law and (3) that the sum of Rs. 4000/- named in Ex. P-l as damages was in no way excessive and was in fact a reasonable compensation to which the plaintiffs were entitled in the circumstances of this case. In this connection, the trial court also came to the conclusion that the defendants had broken the contract as they had re-sold the land in dispute for Rs. 6000/- in excess of the price of Rs. 16,000/- stipulated between them and the plaintiffs The defendants have now come up in appeal.

3. Learned counsel for the defendants did not contest before us the finding of the trial court that no permission was necessary for the completion of the sale. We shall, there fore, say nothing about this point. The points on which he attacked the decision of the court below are two in number. In the first place, he contended that the defendants were not responsible for the infringement

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