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2. The application of the 16th July 1907, for amendment of the written statement was to this effect: The defendants alleged that they had discovered from the record of the mutation proceedings of 1348 that Rajrani Koer then alleged that upon the death of Manyar Singh he had been suoceeded by his son Durga Prosad; and that upon the death of Durga Prosad, about the year 1817, Raj Rani Koer herself had succeeded to the estate as the heiress of his son. It was on this basis that the application was made by Raj Rani Koer in 1848, for mutation of the name of Manyar Singh in the records of the Collectorate. The defendants in the present suit prayed that they might ba allowed to amend their written statement and set up an alternative defence, namely, that if it was established that Manyar Singh left a son Durga Prosad upon whose death the properties passed to Raj Rani Koer, upon the death of the latter the estate would pass not to the sisters of Durga Prosad, namely, Gangabati and Sham Dasi, but to his nephew Rachia Lal, the present plaintiff. In this view, the question would arise whether the defendants, although they had professed to buy the property from Gangabati and Sham Dasi, on the assumption that they were the heirs to the estate of Manyar Singh had not acquired a good title by adverse possession and whether the claim of Rachia Lal to succeed to the estate of Durga Prosad was not barred by limitation. No doubt the legal inference which could follow upon the establishment of the fact that Durga Prosad had succeeded to the estate of his father Manyar Singh was not explicitly set out in the application for amendment; but it was plainly unnecessary for them to state the legal inference in detail; they could at best ask for leave to amend the written statement by a recital of the fact which they had discovered. The question, therefore, arises whether the defendants were entitled in justice to have their written statement amended as prayed. The answer to this question depends upon two elements; namely, first was it open to the defendants to include in their written statement two inconsistent defences; secondly, if it was open to them to do so, whether their application of the 16th July 1907, ought to have been granted so as to enable them to include in the written statement a defence inconsistent with the defence originally taken.

3. Now, in so far as the first of these points is concerned, there can be no room for controversy that it would have been open to the defendants to include two inconsistent defences in the alternative in their original written statement. In support of this proposition, reference may be made to the decision of a Fall Bench of this Court in the case of Narendranath Barary v. Abhoy Charan Chattopadhya 34 C. 51 : 4 C.L.J. 437 : 11 C.W.N. 20 : 1 M.L.T. 364 which was applied in Alickjan Bibi v. Rambaran Shah 12 C.L.J. 357 at p. 360 : 7 Ind. Cas. 166. In the case last mentioned, it was pointed out that a defendant may raise by his written statement as many distinct and separate, and, therefore, inconsistent defences as he may think proper. This is in accord with the rule which prevails in England Hawkesley v. Bradshaw (1880) 5 Q.B.D. 302 : 49 L.J.Q.B. 333 : 42 L.T. 285 : 28 W.R. 557 : 44 J.P. 473.