SUBHAN ALI Vs. IMAMI BEGAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE suit out of which these appeals arise was brought by the plaintiffs for partition and separate possession of their shares in an inam estate or jaghir in Berar, and for payment of their due proportions of the income for the three years immediately preceding the institution of the suit in February, 1916. The estate now comprises the whole of the two villages of Barmi and Dhotra, and three fields in the village of Ganuhpur in the Murtizapur Taluq of the Akola district. The original appellant, Mir Subhan Ali, the present certificate-holder and in sole possession of the inam, was the principal defendant.

(2.) THE trial took place before the Additional District Judge at Akola. He, by his decree, dated 2nd April 19(sic)8, allowed the plaintiffs' claims in full. On appeal the Court of the Judicial Commissioner, Central Provinces, Berar Jurisdiction, by a decree of 5th April 1921, dismissed the suit so far as it was one for partition and separate possession of the inam, but approved the judgment of the Court below in respect of the plaintiffs' claim to income. With the decree of the Judicial Commissioners both parties are dissatisfied' and in the present appeal and cross-appeal now consolidated the plaintiffs, who were cross-appellants, ask that the decree of the Additional District Judge should be restored, while the defendant, Mir Subhan Ali, the original appellant, asks that the plaintiffs' entire claim should be rejected and their suit dismissed.

(3.) THE facts of the case are not free from complexity> but they have been set forth at length and with perfect accuracy in the judgment of the Additional Judicial-Commissioners. Their Lordships accordingly will restate them only so far as is necessary to explain the conclusions at which, on the whole matter, they have themselves arrived.