LAWS(ORI)-1959-11-3

RAMESH CHANDRA PANDA Vs. LAMBODAR PANDA

Decided On November 24, 1959
RAMESH CHANDRA PANDA Appellant
V/S
LAMBODAR PANDA Respondents

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against the judgment of a learned Single Judge of this Court in Second Appeal No. 241 of 1955. The sole question involved is whether the plaintiffs were using the disputed pathway as of right.

(2.) The facts are short and simple. The plaintiffs commenced a suit for declaration of their right of way over the disputed land belonging to the defendants and for a direction that the defendants should remove the obstruction raised by them over the said land and for a permanent injunction restraining them from closing the pathway. The plaintiffs' whole case was that there is a public road (plot No. 52) running east-west between the homesteads of the parties and the suit pathway is situated on the following plots of the defendants and has its point of entrance from the aforesaid public road near the front of the plaintiffs' homestead and its point of departure on a village pasture land which is on the northeast of the said path-way and is being used as a wav by the plaintiffs for generations and for more than thirty years peaceably and openly and as of right to the knowledge of the defendants without any interruption. The said path-way was being used by the plaintiffs, their womenfolk and their cattle. It is due to certain quarrel between the parties that the defendants closed the southern end of tbe disputed path-way by raising a fence. Accordingly, the plaintiffs filed the suit for the afore-mentioned declarations.

(3.) The defence was a complete denial of the existence of the pathway or the right claimed by the pJaintiffs. According to them whole plot was fenced on all sides. They, however, admitted that the present suit was the result of a quarrel regarding certain sebait disputes between the parties who are close relations.