The Law Reports. Under the Superintendence and Control of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales. Indian Appeals: Being Cases in the Privy Council on appeal from the East Indies 1943-44

R. of 1935 operated to exclude the effect of those decisions and entitled the respondents the widow and the two younger sons of the appellant's grandfather to succeed to the property in accordance with Muslim personal law and to the exclusion of the appellant. [...] The validity of this tranfer was disputed by his grandson the present appellant who on February 27 1934 obtained from the court of the Senior Subordinate Judge of the district a declaration that the three villages appertain to the chiefship of the family for the time being and that the transfer was void and inoperative as against the interests of that member of the family to whom the J. C. [...] This contention found favour with the Senior Subordinate Judge who on November 28 1939 dismissed the suit on the ground as he states in his judgment that the villages were not the property of Mir Abdullah but were property appertaining to the chiefship and that the chief for the time being is in the position of an amin (trustee) of the property. [...] The matter came on appeal to the court of the Judicial Commissioner and was heard by the Judicial Commission'er and Kazi Mir Ahmad J. The latter learned judge delivered the judgment of the court reversing the decision of the Subordinate Judge and granting the plaintiffs the present respondents the declaration sought by them that the villages devolved on them on the death of Mir Abdullah. [...] The learned judges recognized that the rule as to the devolution of the villages laid down by Captain Wace under custom would have governed the case but for the intervention of the legislature but they held that the Act had altered the course of succession in so far as to make the ordinary rule of the Mohammadan law applicable and to exclude the operation of custom.