EMPEROR Vs. PANDIT GIRINDRA MOHAN MISHRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We have here to deal with a letter of reference by the District Magistrate of Bhagalpur complaining of an alleged contempt of his Court by one Pandit Girindra Mohan Mishra, Acting Chief Manager of the Darbhanga Raj. The letter of reference was in the ordinary course of affairs placed before a Single Judge of this Court and notice was issued thereupon. The opposite party is here to defend himself against the allegation that he has committed any contempt and the support of the motion has been undertaken by the Government Advocate on behalf of the District Magistrate. One does not know what the course of proceedings actually is, but I think if the matter had been placed by the authorities in the hands of the legal advisers of the Government for advice the motion contained in the letter of reference would never have been pressed. The idea that there is anything in the action of the present complaint which constitutes a contempt of Court is entirely misconceived. The circumstances are as follows:

(2.) North of the river Ganges there are two big estates which are called the Darbhanga Raj and the Banaili Raj. Between the two there runs a depression which is a river in normal times. On the edge of the Banaili Raj there is an embankment and there is a similar embankment on the edge of the Darbhanga Raj. The two embankments face each other across the river. There has been in the past a considerable amount of litigation between the proprietors of the two estates because of the flooding of the country on the one side or the other and each side has attributed this flooding to the conduct of the other party. Sometime ago there was a notification issued under Section 6, Bengal Embankment Act, by which the people in the neighbourhood of this system of embankments were forbidden from erecting any new embankment or adding to any existing embankment or obstructing or diverting any water course without the consent of the Collector. Sir John Whitty (the then Governor of the Province) went to the neighbourhood and endeavoured to bring about some sort of reconciliation between the opposing litigants so that the disputes might be brought to an end, and it would appear that both sides gave him an undertaking that they would not add to the embankments or alter them in any way without going to the Collector and getting the permission of the Government. Now, on the Banaili embankment there occurred a breach and it would appear that water in the rainy season poured through this breach, filled the water course between the lands of the two estates, and it seems that the proprietor of the Darbhanga Raj began to fear damage to the estate property apprehending possibly that the water would overflow the water course and the embankment on his side and so do damage. Thereupon some tenants of the Banaili estate, whose land on the Banaili side had been repeatedly injured by the fact that flooding had taken place, set to work on their own account to repair this breach in the Banaili embankment.

(3.) It would seem that there was some difficulty in merely re-establishing the old line of the embankment because the channel at the mouth of the breach into the water course was of a depth which did not permit of the repair of the breach by merely restoring the old line of the embankment. They therefore on the landward side constructed a curved semicircular embankment from one end of the breach to the other, the convex side of the curve being towards the Banaili line. The result of that was, that as far as linear measurements are concerned the length of the line of the embankment was somewhat increased. On 8 June 1936 the proprietor of the Darbhanga Raj made a petition to the District Magistrate who is also the Collector complaining of this action by the Banaili people.