STATE OF VINDHYA PRADESH Vs. RAM LAKHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an appeal under Section 417, Cr. P. C. by the state of V. P. from the judgment of the learned Magistrate of Rewa acquitting the 13 respondents of the charges under Sections 353 and 379, I. P. C. Simple as are the facts of this case, this Court can conveniently indicate in this, the circumstances justifying an appeal against acquittal, the form of the order and the manner of interim attachment in a proceeding under Section 145, Cr. P. C. , and the distinction between taking possession and the appointment of a receiver.

(2.) IN the village Chachai in the Beohari thana the landlord Lal Jagat Narayan Pratap Singh has mahua groves popularly called mahuaries. The only appropriate act of possession over the land is the collection of flowers from about the last week of March till about the beginning of May. In the season of 1951 these trees were in possession of some of the respondents as tenants; this at any rate has been found in the proceeding under Section 145, Cr. P. C. of which the present case is an oil-shot. Before the mahua season of 1952, the landlord got the pattas cancelled, and the lands reentered in the name or his own son, Lal Jagdamba Pratap Singh; it was found in the 145 Cr. P. C. proceedings, that the revenue Court proceeding was without notice to the tenants, and that the landlord or the new pattedar, his son, had not taken possession before the season of 1952.

(3.) AS a result of other happenings, this purely private dispute led to a sort of local agitation. On account of food shortage in that locality Government which also owns many maharanis, had, in the beginning of 1952, ordered that local peasantry in that locality could collect the flowers of its mahua trees, either free of cost or on payment of very low or nominal rates such as prevailed in Government forests. This was a famine measure, mahua flowers being a good, and in many villages, the only substitute for food-grains. Towards the end of March, Lal Tagat Narayan Pratap Singh and Lal Jagdamba Pratap Singh began to arrange for the collection of the flowers of their manuaries on the strength of the changed pattas. The tenants who were formerly the pattedars insisted upon collecting the flowers themselves. At this stage, respondents 1 and 2, who have no interest in the trees, joined the tenants, and began an agitation of the type popularly called Satyagraha. Their understanding of the position is materially different from that of the tenants and is contained in a letter addressed by respondent No. 1 to the officer i/c P. S. Beohari. They said, while the Government had been good enough to let poor raiyats get the mahua flowers from their mahua trees free of cost or at nominal prices, the landlords like Jagat Narayan Pratap Singh were unwilling to give a similar concession to their tenants; so they would organize satyagrah to bring pressure, presumably moral pressure, on such greedy landlords. The tenants for their part had another, and a legally sounder case, which prevailed in the end, namely, that the revenue Court had passed an ex parte order, and that they had not been dispossessed.