LAKSHMAN JENA Vs. SUDHAKAR PALTASINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application in revision directed against an order dated 23-3-66 passed by the S. D. M. , Khurda, and confirmed in revision by the A. D. M. (J), Puri in the following circumstances.

(2.) THE petitioner lodged information at the Bolagarh P. S. that he was a bhagchasi in respect of plot Nos. 231 and 228 in Khata No. 63 in mouza Shyamsundarpur under the landlord Paramananda Mahapatra and that he raised crops in the land during the disputed year and in due course cut and kept the same in the field for subsequently making them into sheaves and that thereafter the opposite party and these two brothers along with a number of labourers trespassed into the land and removed the crops therefrom. The Police after investigation submitted a final report on the ground of mistake of law. The petitioner thereupon filed a protest petition in the court of the S. D. M. , Khurda, with a prayer for rejecting the final report submitted by the police and to call upon the latter to submit charge-sheet. The S. D. M. without examining the petitioner on oath and without proceeding in accordance with the provisions laid down in Chapter XVI of the Code of Criminal procedure rejected the petition on the ground that the local police had visited the spot and had examined boundary witnesses, who affirmed the possession of the opposite party as bhagchasi of the land and that the petitioner's case was supported by only the landlord Paramananda Mahapatra. Against this order the petitioner filed a revision petition before the A. D. M. (J), Puri who rejected it on the ground that the dispute appeared to him to be of civil nature. It is the procedure followed by the Magistrate and the correctness of the orders passed by him and the A. D. M. , (J) that are now challenged before me.

(3.) IT is now settled by the decision of the Suppreme Court reported in Abhinandan jha v. Dinesh Mishra, AIR 1968 SC 117 that