KEDARNATH Vs. BRAHMANAND

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE are two appeals by the plaintiffs, one by Kedarnath plaintiff and the other by Kanhiya Lal plaintiff against the appellate judgment and decree of the learned District Judge, Jaipur District.

(2.) THESE two plaintiffs filed two separate suits and a third suit of similar nature was brought by one Rameshwar. In all the three suits Brahma-nand respondent was the sole defendant and they were for the recovery of damages for malicious prosecution and were brought in consequence of the acquittal of the plaintiffs by the Court of Sessions, Jaipur District in a case under Sections 454 and 380 of the Jaipur Penal Code. The criminal proceedings were started on the report of the defendant respondent Brahmanand who alleged that in his absence the plaintiffs along with a few others had broken open the lock of the shop in the tenancy of the defendant and had taken away certain movable property without his consent which had been locked up inside the shop by the defendant. The plainiffs' case is that they never broke open the lock of the defendant but that although he had occupied the shop as a tenant of Thakur Kalyanji of which the parties were pujaries, yet he had vacated it on the insistence of the plaintiffs and had taken out his movables from the shop and put them in a kothari of the temple.

(3.) I have no reason to differ with the finding given by the lower courts that in the circumstances of the present case it was not proved by the plaintiffs that the criminal case was brought by the defendant without reasonable and probable cause.