The trustee's right to suspend a hereditary archakar without notice for an ad interim suspension pending inquiry into a complaint against a servant entitled to hold office during good behaviour or for life.

1. The plaintiff in this suit was an archakar in the great Vishnu temple of Srirangam. He instituted the suit against the managers of the temple for the cancellation of an order of suspension passed against him by the managers and to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by him and the value of perquisites which he would have earned if the suspension had not taken place. The only question for decision in this second appeal is whether the suspension which is found to have been otherwise justifiable in the circumstances was illegal on the ground that no notice was given to the plaintiff to show cause against it before the order was passed. The District Judge held it to be illegal on the authority of certain observations contained in Seshadri Aiyangar v. Nataraja Aiyar I.L.R. (1897) M. 179. It may be stated that at the enquiry held after the suspension, the plaintiff was found by the managers to be guilty of the offence complained of against him and he was suspended from office for a term by way of punishment. These offences were that he committed theft and concealed the property belonging to the idol while engaged in the performance of his duties as archakar. We are of opinion that the decision of the District Judge is not correct and that the order of suspension cannot be held to be invalid on the mere ground of absence of notice. According to the view taken by this court, a hereditary archakar like the plaintiff could be dismissed by the trustee only for good reasons which are liable to examination by a court of justice. See Krishnasawmi Thathachari v. G. Rangachari (1867) 4 M.H.C. 63 and with regard to the dismissal of a trustee, Seshadri Aiyangar v. Nataraja Aiyar I.L.R. (1897) M. 179 where the earlier cases are cited and examined. A different rule has no doubt been recently laid down in the Bombay High Court in Bhavani Shankar v. Timmamma I.L.R. (1906) B. 508 by Jenkins C.J., and Batty. J where those learned judges held that the bona fide dismissal of a moktesar by a devastanam committee could not be reviewed by civil court. As the correctness of the decision in Krishnasawmi Thathachari v. G. Rangackari (1867) 4 M.H.C. 63 has not been impugned before us, we accept it as sound for the purposes of this case. The plaintiff is entitled to hold the office during his lifetime and on his death his heirs are entitled to succeed him. The order of suspension we have to deal with is one not passed as a punishment on the plaintiff for an offence of which he was found guilty but an ad interim order preventing him from performing to his office pending the investigation of the charges of misconduct made against him The suspension complained of in Seshadri Aiyangar v. Nataraja Aiyar (1897) L.R. 21 M. 179 was also a similar order. That case was, however, in other respects very different from the present one. The temple committee who passed the order in that case, was a statutory body whose powers had to be determined by the interpretation of the provisions of Act XX of 1863. The question was whether the right of superintendence vested in them by that Act included the right to suspend a trustee. There is certainly authority for the position that a statutory power of dismissal which, according to the decisions, a temple committee possesses, does not necessarily include the right to suspend as a punitive measure - see American Cyclopaedia of Law and Procedure, article "Officers," Vol. 29, p. 1405 and Barton v. Taylor I.L.R. (1886) A.C. 197. The decision of the majority of the judges in that case proceeded largely on the ground that the result of suspension might be to create a temporary vacancy in the office of trustee without possession in any one in whom the management of the temple could vest for the time being. The trustee was no servant of the committee which possessed only the power of supervision over him, conferred on it by statute. The position of an archakar on the other hand, though he may hive a hereditary tenure i