PERUMAL KONAN Vs. TIRUMALAI MACHI REDDIAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners put in a petition under Secs.145 and 147, Criminal P. C, asking that it might be declared that they and their pangalies alone have been in and are entitled to possession of certain temples, and asking that the counter-petitioners may be prohibited from interfering with the exclusive rights of the petitioners and their pangalies to do puja in the said temples. The petition has been dismissed, and the petitioners have come in revision.

(2.) There seems to be no reason whatever for interfering with the order under Section 145. The oral evidence on either side is found not to be very satisfactory, but the documentary evidence clearly indicates that the petitioners occupied a subordinate position to C.P. 1 who held the post of trustee. Possession has been found to be with C.P. 1, while such possession as the petitioners had was on his behalf as subordinate to him a such trustee. The learned advocate for the petitioners on this petition has called to my attention certain authorities, and principally Baboo Reddi V/s. Kullappa Nattan (1881) 2 Weir 107, in which it has been held that when there is a dispute between a tenant and a landlord as to actual possession the point cannot be taken that the possession by the tenant is possession by the landlord. But this view has nothing to do with the facts of the present case. It is a matter of the possession of a servant or subordinate being the possession of the person who has authority over him. That a trustee has authority over an archaka or pujari, even if his post is hereditary as petitioners claim theirs to be, is shown by the decision in Seshadri Aiyangar V/s. Ranga Bhattar (1912) 35 Mad 631. No authority has been quoted to show that a servant can set up that possession by him for his master or superior is his own possession, or that the master or superior cannot set up that possession is his own, though exercised for him by the servant.

(3.) The next point is as to the application under Section 147. As to this the Magistrate has passed no order perhaps because he thought that what was applied for under Section 147 was included in what was applied for under Section 145. As has been pointed out by Sir William Ayling, J., in Palaniyandi Pandaram V/s. Palaniappa Thevan (1916) 17 Cr LJ 235, when there is a dispute as to the possession of a temple and the right to perform puja therein, the Magistrate can deal with the claim as to the right to perform puja as part of the larger relief that is prayed for. If however it is not so included in the major relief, the same decision shows that it is doubtful whether an application under Section 147 can lie merely as to the right to perform puja in a certain temple. As Ayling, J., had pointed out, the wording of the present Section 147 is different from the language of that section in the old Criminal Procedure Code. In the present case then there can be no doubt but that it was competent for the petitioners to make the application under Section 147. I shall therefore refer to it on its merits.