JASIMUDDIN BISWAS Vs. BHUBAN JELINI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The present appeal arises out of a suit brought by the present plaintiffs appellants to recover rent for a certain fishery from the defendants respondents at a rental, which it was alleged was agreed to in a solenama executed by both the parties in suit No. 263 of 1893 in the Court of the Munsiff of Bongong in the year 1893; or, in the event of their not being found entitled to recover the sum claimed from the defendants as tenants, then on the allegation that the plaintiffs are entitled to recover the same sum from the defendants as compensation for use and occupation of the jalkar.

(2.) It appears that in 1893 the plaintiffs brought a suit against some of the defendants claiming damages from them for fish, which they had wrongfully caught in the jalkar. The claim was fixed at Rs. 200. Before the case was disposed of both the parties came to a compromise, and certain other persons, including others of the defendants in the present suit, were made parties in that suit. Afterwards a decree was passed in that suit on the basis of the compromise, and under the terms of the compromise it was agreed that the plaintiffs should recover the sum of; Rs. 60 only as compensation, and that the plaintiffs would give, and the defendants would accept, a permanent lease of the fishery at a fixed rent of Rs. 413 a year. The allegations in the plaint were that the defendants since 1893, when the decree was passed in that suit on the terms of the compromise, had been in possession of the jalkar, and had been realising profits from the same. The defence was that the defendants had never been jointly in possession of the jalkar under the terms of the compromise, but that some of them had been in separate possession of portions of the fishery as they had been before that suit, and had been paying rent to the plaintiff in the same way as they had been paying before.

(3.) The Subordinate Judge, who tried the suit, has recorded a very careful judgment in which he has gone very exhaustively into the evidence adduced by both the parties, and has come to the conclusion that after the suit in 1893 was decreed in accordance with the terms of the compromise the defendants have been in possession of the jalkar as tenants, and that therefore they are liable to pay the rent claimed by the plaintiffs in the present suit. He accordingly gave the plaintiffs a decree.