Entertaining of pre-decretal arrangement in the Court.

Horwill, J.-A preliminary mortgage decree was passed by the District Judge of Masulipatam on the 14th October, 1942; and the decree was assigned to the present decree-holder on the 27th October, 1942. The final decree was passed on the 4th April, 1944; and on some date subsequent to that the decree was transferred from the Court of the District Judge of Masulipatam to that of the Subordinate Judge of Masulipatam. The certificate required under Order 21, rule 6, was sent with it to the effect that the decree had been satisfied to the extent of Rs. 472-8-0. Notice was given to the appellant, who then raised an objection that during the pendency of the suit, even before the preliminary decree had been passed, the mortgage debt had been satisfied, but that the parties for their convenience allowed the decree to be passad and then arranged for the decree to be assigned to the appellant’s paternal aunt’s husband. That assignment was actually made, as already stated, on the 27th October, 1942. In order to bring about the same result as if no decree had been passed at all, the decree-holder filed into Court on the 16th July, 1945, a satisfaction memo. That satisfaction memo, is not on record; and we only know of one having been filed by a reference to the suit register. It was presumably defective in some way; for on the 12th September, 1945, it would appear from a recital in the diary that the document was returned; it was not re-presented. The appellant asked the Court to make enquiry into this allegation and to dismiss the execution petition; because nothing was due to the nominal decree-holder. The learned Subordinate Judge overruled the appellant’s objection on the ground that this was a matter that should have been raised before the transferor Court and could not be considered by him.

We think that the learned Subordinate Judge was right in overruling the objection of the appellant on the ground that he did. Order 21, rule 6, requires. that:

“The Court sending a decree for execution shall send

(a).............

(b) a certificate setting forth that satisfaction of the decree has not been obtained .........; and

(c)...............”

From this it would appear that the Court to which a decree is transferred is bound’ by the order of the transferring Court and the terms of the certificate granted by it. It may be true that in circumstances such as those which came up for consideration in Ramgopal v. Shivnarayan1 a judgment-debtor might be entitled even before the transferee court to plead discharge; but where the act relied on by the judgment- debtor-such as in this case-the filing of a satisfaction memo, is one in the transferor Court itself, the transferor Court alone would have jurisdiction to enquire into the allegation that there had been full satisfaction. If the transferee Court considered that matter, it would be going behind the express terms of the certificate which had accompanied the decree. However, since we are satisfied that the appeal should be dismissed on another ground and since this point has not been fully argued, we prefer to base our dismissal of the appeal on the ground that no executing Court, whether it be the transferor Court or the transferee Court, could enquire as to the truth or otherwise of an agreement of the nature put forward by the appellant.

If the agreement set up by the appellant be true, as we must presume it was for the purpose of considering the question before us, then there was no debt due to the decree-holder on the date when the preliminary decree was passed; and therefore the contention of the appellant that the debt was satisfied does not relate at all to execution. It is argued that because a memorandum of satisfaction was filed in the Court, the matter would relate to the satisfaction of the decree. If we knew nothing but the fact that a satisfaction memo, had been filed, that argument might be a good one; but we must take the allegations of the appellant as they stand. Although the me