GAURI SHANKAR Vs. (MAHARANI) HEMANT KUMARI DEBI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a defendants appeal and arises out of a suit brought against them by the plaintiff-respondent. The ghat known as Prayag Ghat in Mohalla Dasaswamedh, Benares City, was built by the ancestors of the plaintiff and the plaintiff recently repaired the same. The plaintiff's case was that the said ghat was her property, that she and her predecessors-in-title had been in peaceful possession as proprietors and that she had been exercising all the proprietary rights over the same.

(2.) The defendants who are known as "ghatias" had been sitting in different seasons on different portions of the said, ghat with her leave and license for earning their livelihood with alms and gifts from the Hindu pilgrims who came to bathe at the said ghat. The defendants have cut holes on the stairs and pavements and fixed bamboos on them and constructed fire-hearths on the ghat and have thereby been damaging and injuring the plaintiffs ghat. They have proved themselves to be a nuisance and have been causing damage to the plaintiff's ghat. The defendants are mere squatters. They have no right to sit on any portion of the plaintiff's ghat as ghatias without her consent. The plaintiff therefore prayed for: (1) A declaration that she was the owner of the Prayag Ghat and the defendants had no right to sit on any portion of the said ghat as ghatias in any season of the year; (2) a decree in her favour ordering ejectment of the defendants from the said Prayag ghat, and for removal of the railings from pier "A" and of planks, fire-hearths, earth mounds, canopies, bamboo poles and any other articles and obstruction which may be found to have been placed by the defendants on any part of the said ghat; and (3) a permanent injunction against the defendants restraining them from using any portion of the said Prayag Ghat as ghatias in any season of the year and from sitting and squatting over the same for the purpose of collecting dan dakshina from the bathers.

(3.) The appellants-defendants contended that they belonged to the community of ghatias who were settled in the holy city of Benares from thousands of years and whose business and duty was to assist the pilgrims at the time of their bathing in the Ganges and in the proper performance of their religious ceremonies at the Bank of the holy river Ganges.