The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement for proper service of summons, the relevance of defendant's awareness of the decree, and the necessity for sufficient cause for non-appearance in an application under Order 9, Rule 13.

Ramesam, J.

1. The facts of this revision petition may be stated as follows : The respondent before me was the plaintiff in O.S. No. 1006 of 1922 on the file of the District Munsif of Tiruppur. He filed a suit to recover Rs. 797-9-6 due on a pro-note executed on 27th December, 1919, by the two defendants. The 2nd defendant never appeared in the suit and we are not now concerned with him. The 1st defendant is the petitioner before me. The first summons to him was issued in April, 1922. It was not personally served and a fresh service was ordered. Summons was taken out a second time in July, 1922. The Amin went to the village of the defendants on 7th July. He learnt that the defendants had gone to Satyamangalam and other places and the time of their return was not known and that there was no adult male member in their families. The summonses were then affixed to the outer doors of their houses. These facts were sworn to by the Amin before the Deputy Nazir and apparently also confirmed by the report of the village officer. This return of the Amin was on the 10th July. The District Munsif ordered the suit to proceed ex parte and the case was taken up on the 19th July and decreed in favour of the plaintiff. The 1st defendant filed the present petition on the 7th of August, 1923 with an affidavit in which he states that he was not aware of the suit, that the notice in E.P. No. 2104 of 1923 (a petition filed for the execution of the decree) was served on him on 31st July, 1923. He mentioned other facts going to show that there was collusion between the plaintiff and the 2nd defendant and referred to a mortgage obtained by the plaintiffs brother from the 2nd defendant. He afterwards applied for and obtained a copy of this mortgage and filed it before the District Munsif on the 19th of October, 1923. The District Munsif said: "No doubt there was no personal service but 1st defendant has apparently been aware of the decree and second defendants alleged partial adjustment of it 1st defendants defence on the merits seems to be very weak. I am not inclined to set aside the decree." In an application under Order 9, Rule 13, what the Court has to find is not whether the defendant has any good defence on the merits but whether there is proper service and if there is proper service whether there was sufficient cause for his nonappearance. I presume that in this case there was service which was good service according to law though I should think Courts ought not to proceed to the trial of a case until at least three services have been taken upon the defendants which is the practice in the High Court and I would like this to be followed in the Courts below before the case is allowed to proceed ex parte, but as I said I will assume that there was some good service according to law. But even then a defendant may give a good reason for non-appearance. He may tell the Court that as a matter of fact he was unaware of the suit which means that he never saw any paper pasted on the outer door of his house. If the Court believes him it follows that he could not be aware of the suit and in such a case though there was good service there is sufficient cause for the non-appearance of the party, and in such a case the Court ought to set aside the ex parte decree.

2. In Arunachala Aiyar v. Subbaramiah (1922) ILR 46 M 60 : 43 MLJ 632, Schwabe, C. J., and Wallace, J., held that this ought to be the attitude of the Court in dealing with an application of this kind though no doubt there the facts were somewhat different. The same view was taken by the same Bench in Lakshminarayana v. Standard Oil Co. of New York (1933) 44 MLJ 488 though again the facts are somewhat different. Whether the 1st defendant was aware of the decree after the passing of the decree and partial adjustment by the 2nd defendant is irrelevant except for the purpose of deciding whether the petition is barred by limitation. There is no finding by the District Munsif that the petitioner be