(1.) These appeals arise out of two suits for the recovery of possession of certain lands in Mauzas Bagmara and Sujanagar in the District of Sylhet the suits were decreed in favour of the plaintiff and the defendants are the appellants before us.
(2.) The first point raised by the learned Counsel in support of the appeal is that the plaintiff s case rest : entirely on a thak-bust map prepared in the year 1864, which on the facts referred to the judgments of the Courts below is wholly unreliable and worthless, and which has not been and cannot be properly relied. The revenue survey, which followed the thak of the district of Sylhet was apparently not approved by the Local Government under Sections 3 and 4 of the Bengal Alluvion and Diluvion Act of 1847. In 1864 the lands were either jungle or submerged, and therefore, no proper thak could have been prepared. There was no field measurement : the trijunction or starting point could not be fixed, with accuracy and generally, it is urged, the attempt at relaying the maps was futile.
(3.) It is true, no doubt, that the revenue survey proceedings appear not to have obtained the approval of the local Government as contemplated by the Act of 1847. But, although that fact might be of importance if the case were one of the assessment of additional revenue on the basis of the revenue survey, that is not the case before us here. Moreover, it is the thak map we are now concerned with, and not the revenue survey map : and the fact remains that the thak was prepared in the presence of the persons concerned and was signed by them or by their agents, and that such maps have for years been accepted by the Civil Courts as evidence both of possession and of title. As the District Judge has remarked : It is unquestionable that as between proprietor and proprietor the thak has come to be regarded as a correct record of the boundaries of villages and estates."