In Brief
Agricultural land owners mortgaged their fields to secure credit purchases from a shopkeeper through a conditional sale deed. When they failed to repay, the shopkeeper obtained mutation and later sold the land. The owners sued to redeem the mortgage seven years later. The core issue was whether the deed was a true mortgage or an absolute sale. The Supreme Court held it was a valid mortgage by conditional sale, emphasizing that the debtor-creditor relationship, the deed's language, and the mortgagors' financial distress all pointed to a mortgage. The 30-year redemption period under the Limitation Act applied, and the suit was timely. The appeal was dismissed.
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