JOY SEBASTIAN Vs. SANKU KRISHNAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal is by the plaintiff in a suit for. declaration of title and recovery of plaint item No. 1, which is 2 cents of a larger plot of which the remainder is admittedly in possession of the plaintiff. Plaint item No. 2 is a small building put up on item No. 1, by the 1st defendant.

(2.) The plaintiff purchased the property under Ext. P1 dated April 27, 1957. The plaint concedes that long before his purchase, defendants 1 and 2, husband and wife, were in occupation of suit item No. 1, under permission of the prior owners of the property, as kudikidappukars but urges that they ceased to be kudikidappukars when they acquired 25 cents 'of land elsewhere und er Ext. P4 dated December 2, 1952, and that therefore he is entitled to recover the land from them after removal of their building. The 1st defendant contended 2nd defendant remained ex parte that the land in his possession is not part of the plaintiff's property but is poramboke lands, that even if it is plaintiff's land he has perfected a title thereto by long adverse possession, that the allegation that his occupation is under permission given by plaintiff's predecessors is false and that if the plaintiff is found to have title to the property he must be deemed to be a kudikidappukaran entitled to immunity from eviction. The Munsiff found that, except 95 sq. links which alone is poramboke, the land in the possession of the defendants belongs to the plaintiff, that the 1st defendant is a kudikidappukaran and that the plaintiff has failed to prove subsisting title to suit item No. 1, and on the last finding dismissed the suit. On appeal the Additional District Judge affirmed that decree, holding that the defendants' possession was not under permission of the plaintiff's predecessors-in-interest, that the plaintiff lost title by limitation and that the 1st defendant's kudikidappu rights have not been forfeited by the purchase of other land under Ext. P4, which is in the name of the 2nd defendant alone. The plaintiff has come up in second appeal.

(3.) The Munsiff observed: