SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA; MAHARAJA RADHA KISHORE MANIKYA BAHADUR Vs. MAHARAJA RADHA KISHORE MANIKYA BAHADUR; THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The-present suit was instituted by the Maharajah of Tippera to regain possession of certain plots of land in Southern Sylhet. The defendants are the Secretary of State for India and certain Tea Companies, who in virtue of leases granted by the Government are at present in possession of the lands in dispute.

(2.) There were several plots in controversy, but the judgment of the Court below has been so far acquiesced in that the only ones still in controversy before this Board were those known as plots 2, 3, and 4.

(3.) The Maharajah of Tippera is an independent ,chief whose territory borders upon and adjoins the district of Sylhet. The configuration of the country is that there are several parallel ranges or spurs of hills going northward from the higher ground of independent Tippera, and forming valleys between the spurs. Originally the Rajahs of Tippera claimed that all the hill country to the end of the spurs was independent territory. Owing to this claim, Lieutenant Fisher was sent by the Government in 1821 to survey the ground and delimit the boundary. The outcome of his proceedings is preserved in a map and report. On the map he drew a line from West to East, which excluded from Tippera and incorporated in Bengal the spurs in question. His survey was so far as some parts of this line and the country adjoining admittedly incomplete, as the country was wild and covered by jungle and difficulties were created by the opposition of hill men known as Kukis, who acknowledged the supremacy of the Rajah of Tippera. This claim to an extension of independent Tippera seems to have been more or less persisted in by the Maharajah and his successors till 1861, when Mr. Reynolds, of the Survey Office, was sent to finally delineate on the ground the boundary line which Fisher had only drawn on the map. Since 1861 the line thus laid down has been acknowledged as authoritatively settling the boundary.