We are of the view that once the plaintiff has mentioned in the plaint that he was the only son of late Hira Lal, it was not necessary for him to specifically plead that he was an adopted son.
Section 3(57) of the General Clauses Act, 1897 defines 'son' as under: "'son' in the case of any one whose personal law permits adoption, shall include an adopted son;"
Once the law recognizes adopted son to be known as son, we fail to understand why it was necessary for the appellant to plead that he was the adopted son. His averment to the effect that he was the only son, according to us, would be sufficient to lay the claim of inheritance on that basis. No doubt, the respondent has denied the appellant being the son of late Hira Lal. It is for this reason, the appellant wants to prove that he is the adopted son and in support of this plea, the appellant had summoned the original of Adoption Deed dated 29.03.1974 from the office of Sub-Registrar.
It may also be kept in mind that the appellant, in order to prove his claim, is relying upon a document which is a public document and was purportedly registered more than 40 years ago, i.e., in the year 1974.
There was no justifiable reason for the trial court to reject the aforesaid plea in view of the provisions of Section 3(53) of the General Clauses Act. In fact, it was not even necessary for the appellant to move an application under Order VI Rule 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, with an attempt to take a specific plea that he was the adopted son as, we say at the cost of repetition, his plea to the effect that he was the son of late Hira Lal was an adequate plea and to prove that he was the son, he could also place on record the document, i.e., the adoption deed in the instant case, to show that he was the adopted son.
Therefore, the dismissal of application for amendment filed by the appellant on the earlier occasion would be inconsequential, though we may hasten to add that the High Court was not entirely justified in rejecting the application on the ground that his plea that he was the adopted son was inconsistent with the earlier plea. We do not see any such inconsistency. Be that as it may, we are of the view that it was not even necessary to seek an amendment of the plaint and, thus, we leave the matter at that.
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
Pawan Kumar Pathak Vs. Mohan Prasad
[Civil Appeal No. 4456 of 2016 arising out of SLP (Civil) No. 16486 of 2015]
Dated:26 April 2016
Citation: AIR 2016 SC 2155
