FAKIR MOHAN DAS Vs. JAGABANDHU RAUT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This second appeal arises out of a suit brought by the plaintiffs for continuation of possession after declaration of the plaintiffs ryoti right to the land in suit.

(2.) The history of the land is sufficiently set out in the preamble to the judgment of the lower Appellate Court. It appears that in the re visional Settlement after a dispute under Section 103 of the Bengal Tenancy Act the Assistant Settlement Officer found that the plaintiffs-appellants were in possession, but that the respondent No. 1 was a raiyat, so the appellants were recorded as shikmi raiyats under the respondent No. 1, though the parties both deny the relationship of tenant and under-tenant as between themselves.

(3.) The learned Munsif in the first Court dismissed the plaintiffs suit, on the ground that they had not succeeded in getting rid of the presumption raised by the Record of Rights. The learned Judge in the Court below has set aside the judgment and decree of the Munsif and has given the plaintiffs a decree declaring their ryoli right to the land in suit and confirming their possession. Incidentally the learned District Judge in the Court of Appeal below has found as a fact that Jagannath, the ancestor of! the defendants, was a non-occupancy, raiyat, though he has held erroneously as has now been decided by authority, that such a right is not heritable. He has, however, further found as a fact that there was relinquishment of the tenancy by the act of defendant No. 4 and by the acquiescence of the other defendants who, he found, were never in possession. He has, therefore, reversed the Munsif s decision and found for the plaintiffs.