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Judgment
We think the Subordinate Judge was right in holding that the suit was barred under Article 118 of the Indian Limitation Act, IX of 1908. It is
now settled by the Full Bench decision in Varamma v. Gopala Dasayya 35 M.L.J. 57 (F.B.) that a suit for declaration that an adoption is invalid, is
a representative suit which the nearest reversioner is entitled to bring on behalf of the whole body of reversioners born and unborn within the
period prescribed in the article. Time begins to run from the time the adoption becomes known to the plaintiff, and here the adoption came to the
knowledge of the next reversioners as soon as it took place in 1902. Time therefore began to run against the whole body of reversioners from that
date, and the present suit not having been brought within six years, is barred. It is said that the nearest reversioner did not bring the suit because he
had been bribed to give his consent to the adoption. That might have been a good reason for allowing another reversioner to sue within the
prescribed period if there had been one able and willing to do so. It did not prevent the next reversioner from suing himself if so minded, or prevent
the whole body of reversioners being barred if no suit was brought within the prescribed period.
The fact that the plaintiff was born after the alleged adoption and before the suit had become barred under Article 118 did not give him any fresh
cause of action or stop time running which had begun to run against the whole body of reversioners from the date of adoption. To hold otherwise
would be opposed to the express provisions of Section 9. All that Coutts-Trotter J., as we understand him, intended to lay down in the Full Bench
case in Varamma v. Gopala Dasayya 35 M.L.J. 57 (F.B.)679 was that a decree against the next reversioner obtained by fraud or collusion would
not be binding on the other reversioners. These observations do not support Mr. Narayanamurty''s contention that time would not run under the
article against the general body of reversioners if the nearest reversioner abstained from suing from interested motives. The appeal fails and is
dismissed with costs