After the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, came into force, a widow could not adopt to her deceased husband, and the adopted son would not be entitled to inherit the estate of the deceased husband.

JUDGMENT :- This second appeal raises an interesting question of law as to whether an adopted son who was adopted by a Hindu widow after the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, Central Act LXXVIII of 1956, came into force, would be entitled to rights of inheritance to the properties which the widow (the adoptive mother) took as an heir to her husband.

2. One Balayee Ammal succeeded to the properties of her husband, one Nallathambi. She made several alienations and Nallathambi's sisters (plaintiffs in the present litigation) instituted proceedings in 1951 and obtained a declaration that the alienations would not be binding on the reversioners after the lifetime of Balayee. She died on 17-1-1960 and Nallathambi's sisters have filed the present suit for recovery of possession of the properties from the alienees on the basis of the declaration secured in the prior litigation aforesaid.

3. Balayee appears to have adopted her younger sister's son, minor Ganapathi on 31-12-1959 and on the same day, she had also executed a registered deed of adoption acknowledging the said adoption. The contesting defendants, i.e., the alienees and their representatives, resisted the suit on the ground that the plaintiffs have no title to sue and that as a result of the adoption minor Ganapathi became the nearer heir to the estate of Nallathambi. The Sub-Judge found that the adoption had been made out. But (on the question of law) he differed from the trial Court and decreed the suit holding that the son adopted by a widow would be an heir only to the properties of the widow and not to the estate of her deceased husband. Hence the present second appeal by the defeated defendants.

4. The widow was not in actual possession of the properties of her husband she having alienated the same long before the Hindu Succession Act came into force and the reversioners of Nallathambi would be entitled to recover possession of the properties from the alienees on the death of the widow Balayee. This right of the reversioners would be unavailing if the adopted son is to be regarded as an heir not only to the widow, Balayee, but also to her husband Nallathambi. My attention was drawn to a recent Bench decision of the Bombay High Court reported in Ankush v. Janabai, AIR 1966 Bom 174 in which it was held that as a result of an adoption by, either spouses, the adopted son becomes the child of both the spouses and that this result necessarily followed from the combined operation of the customary Hindu law and the provisions of the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, Central Act LXXVIII of 1956, hereinafter referred to as the Act. In a recent decision reported in Subbash Missir v. Thagai Missir, AIR 1967 All 148, a similar view has been taken. In the Bombay decision the main reasoning is that under Section 12 and sub-section (6) of Section 11 of the Act, there is a complete severance of all ties of the child given on adoption in the family of his or her birth and correspondingly "these very ties of the child became automatically replaced in the adoptive family". The effect of the adoption is to completely transfer the child from the family of its birth to the family of its adoption. The several deeming provisions in Section 14 of the Act tend to the same view. Section 5 and Section 8 of the Act do not warrant the view that after the commencement of the Act, the widow can make an adoption only to herself and it was not competent for her or permissible for any widow to take any child in adoption to her deceased husband. The acceptance of the rival view that the deceased husband cannot be regarded as the adoptive father would result in absurd results that while the adopted son would lose all his ties in the family of his birth, he would not become related to the deceased husband or the husband's collateral relations and there is nothing in the Act to indicate that the provisions in the Act were intended to abrogate the position which existed under the customary Hindu l