Estate duty inclusion under section 9 turns on whether property passed by a transfer within the look-back period or by an earlier vested title.

For estate duty under section 9 of the Estate Duty Act, property brought within a compromise only through a transfer executed within the statutory look-back period is includible in the deceased's estate. Here, the compromise decree cancelled the earlier gift for six acres and gave effect to a settlement within two years of death, so those six acres were treated as passing on death. By contrast, the remaining ten acres were already vested under an earlier sale deed and were merely affirmed by the compromise, so they were not property passing on death. The existence of gift-tax liability did not bar separate examination under estate duty.

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Issues: Whether the 16 acres of land were includible in the deceased's estate under section 9 of the Estate Duty Act, 1953, and, if so, to what extent.

Analysis: The compromise decree cancelled the 1957 gift in respect of six acres and gave effect to the 1962 settlement in favour of the third party, with the result that the third party derived title to those six acres only under the settlement executed within two years of the deceased's death. That brought the six acres within section 9. In contrast, the remaining ten acres were traceable to the 1954 sale deed in favour of the donee, which the compromise affirmed rather than displaced. Those ten acres had therefore passed out of the deceased's estate long before death and could not be treated as property passing on death for estate duty purposes. The levy of gift-tax did not prevent estate duty from being examined independently.

Conclusion: The six acres were rightly included in the estate and the ten acres were not.

Ratio Decidendi: For estate duty, property secured by a compromise only through a transfer made within the statutory look-back period is includible under section 9, whereas property already vested under an earlier sale and merely affirmed by compromise is not.

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