SRI RAM ALIAS SIRYA Vs. MUHAMMAD-UD-DIN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) IN this case the father of the plaintiff gave a lease of certain specified plots of land to two persons, Behari and Baldeo. It does not appear to have been denied in this litigation, and in any case is proved by the statement of the Patwari, a witness strongly hostile to the plaintiff) that the plaintiff s father and the plaintiff after him was solely entitled to collect the rents of these plots of land and could, therefore, give a lease of the same. When the period of lease had expired the tenants gave no relinquishment and have been found by the lower Appellate Court to have continued to hold on. Baldeo has died leaving two sons who are impleaded in this suit as having succeeded to Baldeo in the tenancy. Behari has a son Sri Ram, alias Sirya, who has been impleaded under peculiar circumstances. The plaintiff s case is that the said Sirya has acquired by purchase a share in the milk to which the plots of land in suit appertain, that he has been let into possession of these plots by collusion with his father Behari, and that the Patwari has been induced to record these plots as the hhudkasht holding of Sirya. The plaintiff accordingly sues to eject Sirya along with the other tenants. Sirya alone has contested the case. He says in his written statement that he has purchased the proprietary rights in the plots in suit by a registered sale-deed, and that this purchase was taken under such circumstances that the plaintiff is estopped from denying the same. This plea entirely broke down. Not only has Sirya not produced the sale-deed on which he relies, but the evidence of the Patwari is sufficient to show that what Sirya has purchased is a share in the zemindan rights of this milk which does not cover the plots of lard in suit. According to the Patwari the land in suit appertains to a milk, which ordinarily means a number of plots of land owned individually as such by particular co-sharers outside of any regular patti or mahal. It would have been interesting to know whether the appellant s sale-deed purported to convey to him proprietary rights in specified plots, or in a specified area, or some fractional share in the proprietary rights of the milk. Owing to the appellant s failure to put the document in evidence the matter cannot be determined with certainty. The appellant s plea that he had acquired proprietary rights to the plots in suit has broken down. The main point taken in appeal, as it was in the Court below, is that Sirya is in any case not in possession as a tenant of the plaintiff. The finding appears to be that he is in fact in possession along with his father, one of the original tenants, and that he has been let into such possession as he enjoys collusively, by this father in order to prejudice the rights of the plaintiff. Under these circumstances the Courts below have, in my opinion, rightly ordered the ejectment of Sri Ram along; with the original tenants. The land in suit is obviously not his khudkasht, as the patwari has recorded it, and his possession does not, in my opinion, rise to the dignity of that, of a trespasser. He seems to me to have been let into such possession as he enjoys as a sub-tenant, or a licensee of his father. The general principle that a purchase by a tenant of land in a village or of a fractional share, in the same village does not convert him into, a proprietor of that land or abolish the proprietary rights therein of the other co-sharers, was laid down by this Court in, Mahabir Singh v. Ashan Ullah A.W.N. (1901) 53. I have, not disposed of this case solely on the strength of that ruling, because the Courts below have recorded no finding in respect to the plaintiff s allegation that, as regards this purchase of a share in the milk, the appellant Sirya is only a benamidar for his father Behari. Apart from this point, I think the reasons given are sufficient to warrant the dismissal of this appeal. It is hereby dismissed with costs.