GANAPATHI REDDY RAMI REDDY Vs. DUVVURI CHINNAPA REDDY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in revision from an order of the lower appellate Court granting a mandatory injunction at an 'interlocutory stage. The short facts necessary for the purpose of disposing of this appeal are that the plaintiff and the defendants are owners of properties which are separated by a lane about four feet wide, the plaintiff having purchased his property about sixteen years bade. The plaintiff's case is that the lane dividing his property from the property of the defendant is of common ownership, and that for the last several years he has been discharging bath water into that lane through a sluice which the defendants have unlawfully closed about three months before the suit came to be filed. The defendant, on the other hand contend that the lane in question is their exclusive property and the plaintiff has no right to discharge water into it. That the plaintiff has been discharging rain water into that lane through eaves profecting into it has not been disputed. Commissioners were appointed who have inspected the property and the observations of the Commissioners show that the sluice in question is not a recently opened one and there is a stone tub near the disputed sluice, which would suggest that the place was used for the purpose of bathing. On considering the reports of the Commissioners and the other facts pointed out, the lower Court has granted a mandatory injunction at an interlocutory stage, with the condition that the plaintiff must keep the channel clean and should not allow any water, other than bath water and rain water, to enter that channel.

(2.) It is true that ordinarily a Court does not grant a mandatory injunction at an interlocutory stage, but that is not because it has no jurisdiction to do so. In a proper case which must be rare, the Court certainly has jurisdiction to grant a mandatory injunction at an interlocutory stage. If on the facts before it, the learned Judge of the lower appellate Court has exercised that jurisdiction, considering the present case to be of an extraordinary nature, I fail to see how this Court can interfere in revision with that order, which is of a discretionary nature. In my opinion, the present revision application is not maintainable on that ground.

(3.) Even on facts, the defendants seem to have made this more an issue of prestige than anything else. As the learned Judge of the lower Court has pointed out, they have not placed any material whatsoever to show that the lane is in their exclusive ownership. What is more, the sketch shows that they have a direct entrance from the main road and that they have their own bath rooms on the side of the lane. Considering all these factors and several other circumstances, pointed out to him, as well as the report of the Commissioner, the learned Judge of the lower appellate Court came to the conclusion that immense inconvenience would be caused to the womenfolk of the plaintiff's family by refusing to grant the mandatory injunction that was sought at an interlocutory stage, and that there would be hardly any inconvenience to the defendants if the sluice is ordered to be opened pending the disposal of the suit. The main grievance of the learned Advocate for the petitioners was that a mandatory injunction cannot be granted so as to restore the status quo prior to the institution of the suit, but there is no such limitation on the Court's power to grant a mandatory injunction of that nature in an appropriate case, particularly when the status quoar.tehas been altered shortly prior to the suit and that act itself was the direct and proximate cause as a result of which the suit came to be filed. Reliance was sought to be placed upon a decision of a single Judge of the Madras High Court in the case of Gopayya v. Sobhanadri, but I do not read the judgment as laying down any such proposition. What is stated therein is :