ANNAKUMARU PILLAI Vs. MUTHUPAYAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Officiating Chief Justice,--The petitioner preferred against the accused a complaint of theft in that the latter had removed a quantity of chanks from a portion of the bed of the sea on the Coromandel Coast, it being alleged by the petitioner that he was entitled to them as one claiming under the Raja of Ramnad and that the right to all chanks to be found in certain specified localities on the Ramnad coast inclusive of the portion in question was, from time immemorial, vested exclusively in the holders of the Ramnad Zamindari. The Head Assistant Magistrate of Ramnad, after examining some only of the witnesses cited by the petitioner, dismissed the complaint on the analogy of decisions passed with reference to charges of theft of fishes in open waters.

(2.) The questions which arise for determination in the present case are. 1. (a). Whether live chanks not actually seized but remaining free in their natural habitat in the bed of the sea are the subject of property? (b). Whether a taking of them would not constitute theft even if they are the subject of property? (c). Is possession within the meaning of Section 379 of the Indian Penal Code predicablc in respect of them, with reference to persons entitled to them? 2. If these questions are to be answered in the affirmative, whether, in the circumstances of the present case, the complainant is in law precluded from establishing an exclusive right to such of them as exist beyond a marine league from low water-mark? 3: Whether the courts of this country have jurisdiction to try charges of theft of chanks when the removal of the chanks is from it locality outside the said marine league limit?

(3.) It is necessary to preface the discussion of these questions with a few general observations. Chanks are molluscs being species of the genus Turbinella. They are found on the coast of the present districts of Madura and Tinnevelly on the one side and of Ceylon on the other (Balfour's Cyclopaedia of India, 3 Edition, Vol. I, p. 656). They thrive in sand-beds in the seabottom, the sand being of a special nature locally called "puchimanal or sand breeding worms (on which the chanks feed)--Report on chank and Pearl-Fisheries by Mr. H.S. Thomas (1884) p. 16, Section 45. Such beds exist all along the abovementioned coasts in depths of 2 to 10 fathoms or thereabouts. (Balfour's