HARI NARAYAN SINGH DEO Vs. SRIRAM CHAKRAVARTI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants are the Rajah of the Pachete Estate and the Manager thereof under Act VI of 1876.

(2.) The question in the case is as to the right to the minerals lying under a certain village called Petena, situate within the ancestral zemindari of the first appellant. The case has been left singularly bare of evidence, and must be decided chiefly by giving effect to the proper presumptions arising out of a small number of ascertained facts. Happily the field of controversy has been narrowed by certain concurrent findings of fact. Both Courts are agreed that about 60 years ago, in the time of the first plaintiff's predecessor, a transaction took place whereby the latter appropriated to a certain Hindu Idol known as Thakur Gopi Nath Jiu, of whom certain persons known in these proceedings as the Goswamis, or Gossains, were the shebaits or priests, an interest of some sort in the village of Petena, at an annual rental of Rs. 22-15-6. There is no document or evidence defining the terms of the arrangement with the Idol set up at the trial. The defendants, however, against whom the plaintiff's first took proceedings to restrain interference with their minerals, purported to justify their trespasses under the authority of the Goswamis under whom they claimed to hold a lease. Two leases of the 6 and 7 Magh 1228 respectively (1821 A.D.), purporting to have been granted by the Goswamis to the said defendants, and also certain rent receipts said to have been exchanged, were produced on the part of the defendants at the trial, but they were held by both Courts to be palpable forgeries. Both Courts have held that the village Petena is a mal village of the Pachete Estate, i.e., it is a part of the first plaintiff's zemindari. There is no evidence whatever that the zemindar Rajah has ever granted mineral rights in the said village to the Goswamis or any other person. Both Courts agree that no prescriptive rights have been proved by the respondents to any underground rights in the village. The language of the High Court is quite explicit: There is no evidence regarding the extent, publicity, or continuity of such operations to establish the mokuraridar's acquisition by prescription of the underground rights claimed.

(3.) The Subordinate Judge finds that there is no evidence to show that the plaintiffs 1 and 2 were aware of the exercise of any underground rights before 1898, when steps were immediately taken to stop it. Two decrees in favour of the Rajah for the payment of an annual rent of Rs. 22-15-6 by the Goswamis were put in, in one of which they were described a "cultivators," in the other as "britti-holders."