' This dispute, having a chequered history of litigation extending over a period of more than 50 years, started with a sale of agricultural land made by its owner, one Rajja; on 9-4-1931 in favour of Muhammad Hayat and others, the predecessors of Mst. Barkat Bibi etc., the present respondents Nos. 1 to 9.
2. A usual declaratory suit under custom filed against the sale by Muhammad Din, respondent No.10, a son of the vendor Rajja, was decreed on 7-8-1944 and there ended the matter. Thereafter, in the second phase, Muhammad Salehon respondent No.11, claiming to have purchased the land from the said Muhammad Din, filed a suit against him wherein a consent decree is claimed to have been passed in the year 1958. Then again, in the year 1962, the said Muhammad Salehon brought yet another suit to get his consent-decree eilectuated, which seems to have, however, been dismissed ultimately. Then, another set of contendors for the land in suit came into existence which comprises of Ghulam Nabi and others, the present petitioners, who also claim to have purchased this land from Muhammad Din son of Rajja in the year 1976.
' Then came the third (present) phase of litigation wherein three declaratory suits were filed respectively by (1) the said Muhammad Salehon (2) Muhammad Din the son of the vendor Rajja and (3) Mst. Barkat Bibi etc., the legal heirs of the original vendees, who had impleaded all the other three parties, namely, Ghulam Nabi etc., Muhammad Din and Muhammad Salehon as defendants in their suit.
' After contest entered by the respective defendants, all three suits were consolidated for trial and the proceedings were held in the suit of Mst. Barkat Bibi etc. A total of 14 consolidated issues were set down for trial and the controversy appears to have boiled down to determining the actual date of death of the vendor Rajja whereabout the parties were at variance inasmuch as one side claimed him to have died on 13-8-1957 and the other put the date of his death as 15-8-1975. Three copies cf his death entries marked respectively as Exhs. D.4, D.10 and D.24 were brought on the record alongwith the copies of the pleadings of the suit which had been filed in the meanwhile; for proving the contentious date of death of Rajja. After considering the evidence existing on the record, learned trial Judge concluded that Rajja had in fact died on 13-8-1957 and, in result, by his judgment dated 23-4-1984 dismissed the suits of Muhammad Din and Muhammad Salehon for the main reason that the decree secured by Muhammad Din in the year 1944 had lost efficacy but decreed the suit of Mst. Barkat Bibi and others, the legal heirs of the original vendees.
2. There were two appeals filed thereagainst respectively by Muhammad Salehon and Ghulam Nabi etc., who claimed to have purchased the same land from Muhammad Din son of Rajja in the year 1976. A learned Additional District Judge reconsidered the evidence existing on the record and affirming the conclusion of the trial Court about the death of Rajja having taken place in August, 1957, dismissed both the appeals by his judgment dated 14-5-1987 by upholding the decrees of the trial Court.
3. The alleged last purchasers Ghulam Nabi etc., have now come up to this Court on revision, wherein apart from impleading the legal heirs of the original vendees as respondents Nos. 1 to 9 Muhammad Din and Muhammad Salehon have also been arrayed as respondents Nos. 10 and 11 respectively.
4. Counsel contends that the two Courts below have wrongly determined the death of Rajja to have taken place in August 1957, contrary to the evidence furnished by the pleadings of the earlier suit brought on the record as Exhs. P.21 and P.22 which have been omitted altogether from consideration. This contention is completely devoid of substance and is nothing short of a deliberate misrepresentation made about the detailed judgments recorded by the two Courts below inasmuch as not only that the trial Court had duly attended to them in reaching the conclusion that Rajja had died in August, 1957 and even the learned Additional District Judge has specifically referred to Exhs. P.21 and P.22 in para 8 of his judgment, but also it stands clearly averred in para 3 of the plaint (Exh. P.21) filed by Muhammad Salehon that Rajja had died a month before the filing thereof on 4-9-1957 and Muhammad Din son of Rajja had filed the written statement (Exh.P.22) to admit the correctness of such an averment in para 3 thereof. The two Courts below have accepted the said averment to be correct and I do not see how may they have either ignored or misread the said documents to reach to the conclusion that Rajja had died in August, 1957? Contention thus fails.
5. This case actually gets concluded with the concurrent findings of fact, justified on the record, reached by the two Courts below with regard to the death of Rajja having taken place in August, 1957. It has been conceded before me that before the present suit for declaration filed by Muhammad Din, he had not filed any suit for possession on the basis of the declaratory decree under custcm passed in his favour in the year, 1944 and there can be no doubt that the said decree had lost efficacy on account of the expiry of the limitation of three years prescribed under Article 2 of the Schedule to the Punjab Limitation (Custom) Act I of 1920 for filing a suit for possession on the basis of such a decree inasmuch as section 7 thereof, so far as it is relevant hereto, laid down:- "No suit for the possession of ancestral immovable property on the ground that an alienation of such property is not binding on the plaintiff according to custom shall lie if a suit for a declaration that the alienation is not so binding would be time-barred, unless a suit for such a declaration has been instituted within the period prescribed by the schedule."
' The expiry of limitation thereunder for such a suit has the undoubtable effect of making the title of the original vendeesthe predecessors of Mst. Barkat Bibi etc. , indefeasible in law and its subsequent repeal by the West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act V of 1962 cannot have the effect of reviving a cause which had already become time-barred. See Mst.
Fattan Bi and 2 others v. Fateh Muhammad and 6 others (PLD 1974 Lah. 458), which was a case of an alienation made by a limited-owner and while considering the effect of expiry of limitation under the Punjab Act I of 1920, it was held therein as under:- "After the enforcement of the Act of 1920, the provisions of this Act were made applicable to the suits to which Article 141 of the Limitation Act was applied. The period of limitation for a suit for possession' where a declaratory decree was obtained was reduced to three years. If it is held that Article 141 will now apply even to the cases where the right to sue was barred under section 7 of the Act of 1920 it will amount to holding that by the repeal of this Act the provisions of Article 141 are reviewed. This will render clause (c) of subsection (1) cf section 4 of the General Clauses Act nugatory." ' and, after a copious reference to the case-law, it was concluded:- "It cannot, therefore, be held that by the repeal of the Act of 1920, Article 141 of the Limitation Act is revived even in regard to cases which were barred by limitation under the repealed Act."
' Afortriori, the other Articles of the Limitation Act like 1201 and 142 also do not avail to Muhammad Din for his claim with regard to the land sold by his father having become barred by time so that it is incapable of being resurrected at this stage and with him also sink his two vendees.
6. This entire dispute seems to have resulted actually from an unfortunate miscomprehension about the scope and effect of the declaratory decree passed in the year 1944 inasmuch as the vendor's son Muhammad Din and even his two vendees seem to have mis-assumed that title in the land had been created in him by the said decree. Such is not the purport and effect of a declaratory decree passed in such a suit which simply protects the right of inheritance of the concerned persons from the effect of such an alienation which, in absence of such a decree, would have remained effective so that the alienated land would not have formed a part of the estate of the deceased. Such a declaratory decree does not either by its own force invest title in the alienated property in any one nor does it even purport to declare as to who may be lawfully entitled to get the property after the death of the alienor but simply renders the alienation ineffective on and from the moment of opening out of succession so that until then, the alienation remains effective and the transferee remains vested with the right to retain the alienated property.
Under the law, it is upon the death of a person that his heirs come to be determined under the law regulating his inheritance, to become invested with a right to recover the property left by the prepositus but since by virtue of the alienation made by the prepositus himself the transferred property does not remain a part of the estate of the deceased and passes on to the transferee, therefore, it does not fall to be automatically inherited by the heirs. It was only with a view to avoiding the effect of such an alienation qua the right of inheritance of the collaterals that suits under the Punjab Customary Law were filed to have it declared that the alienation made by the last owner would not affect such a right of inheritance when it opens out and the decrees passed in such suits did not do anything more than declaring that the inheritance, when it opens out, will not be prejudiced by the alienation. Since it could be only upon the death of the owner that his lawful- heir could get a right to take the possession on the basis of his title, therefore, he had a period of 12 years under the ordinary law of limitation to file a suit for this purpose. This period having been reduced to 3 years by the said Act of 1920, the expiry of the period of such limitation brings into effect section 28 of the Limitation Act whereunder title gets extinguished in consequence of expiry of limitation which, even if the case may by any stretch be made liable to be examined under the Limitation Act of 1908, remains an unavoidable consequence in view of the concurrent findings of fact, justified on the record, reached by the two Courts below that Rajja had died in the year 1957 and the present suits had been filed long thereafter, only in the year 1976. Thus due to the failure of Muhammad Din to file any suit for possession within the period limited by law, he had not acquired any right in the land in suit and muchless was he possessed of any alienable title so that neither of his alleged vendees can be considered to have ever got any title in the suit land.
7. Punjab Ordinance XIII of 1983 poses yet another insurmountable obstacle in the way of Muhammad Din and his transferees inasmuch as under section 2-A added thereby to the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act V of 1962, Rajja has to be considered to have become an absolute owner under the Muslim Law of the land sold by him, right from the inception of the acquisition by him of the land so that his alienation is rendered incapable of being challenged and even the declaratory decree passed in the year 1944 has become void and of no legal effect.
8. In the above view of the matter, both the rival suits of Muhammad Din and Muhammad Salehon have been rightly dismissed by the two Courts below to decree the suit of Mst. Barkat Bibi etc., the heirs of the original vendees. The decrees passed below are unexceptionable.
9. There is no force in this Civil Revision which is accordingly dismissed in limine.