SRI SRI SRI VIKRAMADEO MAHARAJLUNGARU; MAHARAJA OF JEYPORE Vs. KISHETRAVARA TODRAMAL NARENDRA TATRAJ BAHADUR GARU, HAVING DIED, HIS WIFE AND LEGAL, HEIR SRI RUKMINI PATTAMAHADEVI GARU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal relates to the claim of the Maharajah of Jeypore to eject the the defendant, Thatraz of Bissemkatak, from that estate and to recover from him arrears of kattubadi and profits on the grounds that he has denied his liability to pay Rs. 15,000 annually and to render service and has defaulted in both respects in each year from October 1903, such payment and service being the tenure on which the estate is held. Defendant s contentions are that (1) he holds at a fixed jama of Rs. 2,200 only, (2) that the income of his estate was excluded from the assets of Jeypore for the purpose of the Permanent Settlement and that, therefore, his jama is not liable to enhancement, or his estate to resumption, and (3) he is bound to no service.

(2.) We refer to the Thatraz as defendant, though he died pending the suit, and his widow was impleaded in his place.

(3.) The Jeypore Maharajah owns a large zemindary of over 12,900 square miles extent, situated in the hill tracts of the Vinagapatam District, of which the Bissemkatak estate, measuring approximately 500 square miles, forms part. Those tracts came under the British Government at the Permanent Settlement in 1802. But for many years they were without local Courts, Magistracy or Police, being until 1839 under the Courts on the plains. By Act XXIV of 1839 they were placed for all purposes under the Agent to the Governor and were subject to the law, as represented by rules framed thereunder. Before 1863, however, there were, in fact, neither British Magistracy nor Police in Jeypore territory. During the greater part of the period from 1869, with which we are concerned, the country was, as the District Gazetteer shows, intermittently in a state of private war between Jeypore and its neighbour, Vizianagaram, or its feudatories, including defendant s predecessors. In these circumstances, the origin and development of titles would naturally be obscure and the evidence regarding them meagre and ambiguous. It is not, however, on that account permissible to treat the burden of proof, as it devolves on either party, as discharged, until a reasonable degree of certitude has been reached, or to refuse, to the prejudice of the one, to draw inferences from substantial defects in the evidence of the other.