H.Bellenoit gives the details of the individual British Raj era law cases and concludes that since the kayasthas are a non-cohesive group and not a single caste, their varna was resolved in the cases that came up by taking into account regional differences and customs followed by that particular caste. Bellenoit also disagrees with W.Rowe by showing that Herbert Hope Risley's theories were in fact used to ultimately classify them as Kshatriyas by the British courts. The first case began in 1860 in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh with a property dispute where the plaintiff was considered an 'illegitimate child' by the defendants, a north-Indian Kayastha family. The British court denied inheritance to the child, citing that Kayasthas are Dvija, "twice-born" or "upper-caste" and that the illegitimate children of Dwijas have no rights to inheritance. In the next case in 1875 in the Allahabad High Court, a north Indian Kayastha widow was denied adoption rights as she was an upper-caste i.e. Dwija woman. However, in a 1884 adoption case as well as a 1916 property dispute, Calcutta High Court argued that Bengali kayasthas have started using names like 'Das' and classified the Bengali Kayasthas as shudras - although the court did acknowledge their Kshatriya origin. The Allahabad High Court ruled in 1890 that Kayasthas were Kshatriyas. Finally, in a property dispute case in Patna in 1926, the Patna court characterized both the 1884 and 1916 Calcutta courts rulings as inconclusive and ultimately ruled that the kayasthas were of Kshatriya origin and hence twice born or dwija. The Patna court cited smritis and Puranas, several colonial ethnologists, such as William Crooke and Herbert Hope Risley, and used their qualified endorsements on the dwija origins of Kayasthas. The British census of 1931 also lists Kayasthas as one of the upper (twice-born) castes.