Original Suit No. 204 of 1929 was a suit to recover possession of a site from defendants 1 to 3, to have a street restored, and for the payment of a sum of Rs. 50 as damages for the year 1928. The plaint was presented on 13th July, 1929. There was a decree in favour of the plaintiffs on 17th August, 1931, directing defendants 1 to 3 to remove the enclosure around the site that they had put up and to put the plaintiffs in possession of it so that it might be available for communal user of the plaintiffs and the defendants; the street was to be restored to its original condition, and defendants 1 to 3 were directed to pay the plaintiffs Rs. 30 as damages for the year 1928. There was no claim for mesne profits subsequent to 1928 and the decree awarded none. The decree-holders applied to the District Munsiff in I. A. No. 221 of 1943 for the ascertainment of future mesne profits under Order 20, rule 12, Civil Procedure Code and for a decree for the amount that may be ascertained. They were resisted by the first defendant, one of the three judgment-debtors, who pleaded that the liability had become discharged by reason of section 10, clause (2) of the Madras Debt Conciliation Act, 1936, (a) as he applied for a settlement of his debts and the decree-holders did not file any statement setting out this debt arising in connection with future mesne profits and (b) that the application under Order 20, rule 12, Civil Procedure Code, was misconceived, as the decree did not award any future mesne profits nor direct any enquiry in this connection.

The District Munsiff dismissed the petition, accepting the first contention but rejecting the second. On appeal, the Subordinate Judge held that the petition under Order 20, rule 12, Civil Procedure Code, was maintainable but that the liability for future mesne profits could not be described as a “debt” within the meaning of the Madras Debt Conciliation Act to be wiped out or discharged by reason of the omission of the creditor to file a statement, as contemplated under section 10, clause (1) of the Act. He pointed out further that, as regards the liability for mesne profits of defendants 2 and 3, there could be no question of its being wiped out, as they did not go before the Debt Conciliation Board, and that the petition was, in any event, wrongly dismissed so far as they were concerned. He remanded the petition to the lower Court for fresh disposal. It is against this order of remand that this miscellaneous appeal has been filed.

It is fairly clear that the liability for future mesne profits, not adjudicated upon by any decision of a Court and the amount being unascertained, cannot well be described as a “debt” within the meaning of the Act. It would really be doing violence to the ordinary meaning of the word to give it this wide and all embracing interpretation. The definition of the word given in the Act does not warrant it. A mature debt, as distinguished from an immature debt, refers to a sum of money that is payable immediately as contrasted with a sum that is due but the payment of which is postponed.

It is equally clear that the liability for mesne profits of defendants 2 and 3 cannot be said to be wiped out by anything that the first defendant did and the decree-holders omitted to do vis-a-vis the first defendant’s act. The argument is plausible that, by reason of the failure of the decree-holders to file a statement, the first defendant’s debt has been wiped off. To say that the joint and several liability of defendants 2 and 3 is also wiped out is to confer on the debtor a protection which would never have been intended by the framers of the Act.

But on the first point, I think the appellant is on firm ground. The District Munsiff held that the petition was maintainable because the Madras amendment to Order 20, rule 12, Civil Procedure Code, introducing clause (3) was comprehensive. The Subordinate Judge took the same view on the strength of the decision in Muthayya Kone v. Rakappan A