AHMED BALU DABIR Vs. GANESH VISHNU PENDSE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The plaintiff in this case was a Vatandar Khot of the village of Padhvan in the Mangaon Taluka of Kolaba District, and the substantial question in the suit is whether the plaintiff or the defendants were the owners of certain injali trees standing upon lands which were in the occupation of the vendors of defendants. These vendors, it is now conceded, were not Dharekaris, but held their lands since the introduction of the Survey Settlement as tenants of the Khot, subject to certain rights in the nature of rights of occupancy.

(2.) The case appears to have been approached in the lower Court on the footing that the Government were formerly owners of the trees growing upon these lands ; and there seems little reason to doubt that that is the true view of the matter. The lands are Khoti-nisbat lands, and it has been held by this Court in The Collector of Ratnagiri V/s. Vyankatrav (1871) 8 B.H.C.R. (A.C.J.) 1 that by virtue of Dunlop's Proclamation of 1824, the Khots became the owners of the trees standing in such lands. That decision, if followed, is practically conclusive on the facts of the present case, and the same conclusion must follow if the particular circumstances here are considered.

(3.) There are three persons, and three only, in whom the rights to these trees are conceivably vested, viz., the Government, the Khot and the vendors of defendants, and if it is true, as appears to be the case, that trees were originally the property of Government, then whatever rights Government may have had were conceded by the Proclamation alluded to, and the person in whose favour that grant was made was the person on whose lands the trees were actually growing at the date of the Proclamation.