MT. BANI Vs. ZAMAJI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE present suit was field on 22nd December 1924, and it is the plaintiffs' case that they are within tine because, according to them, the death of Gangabai after whom they claim to succeed as reversioners took place on 6th January 1913. In support of this contention of theirs they produced a report of her death in the Kotwil's diary of which Ex. P-3 is a copy. This report is dated 6th January 1913 and does not mention the date of Cangabai's death. But the Courts below have inferred that the death was within 12 years of the suit from the fact that the report is dated 6th January 1913, and in the usual course of things it must have taken place within a week of the date of the report. The correctness of this conclusion is challenged by the appellants in this Court on the ground that there is no positive rule in the manual framed by the Local Government under the Berar Land Levenue Code prescribing that the village watchman or the patel of a village in Berar must report births and deaths every week. Looking to the object of these reports and their usefulness in the matter of compiling periodical vital statistics, I am not prepared to differ from the lower appellate Court and hold that the inference drawn by it is altogether erroneous or one which could not have been reasonably drawn from facts proved. It was open to that Court to draw the inference and to come to the finding it did in the state of the record. The appeal, therefore, fails and is dismissed with costs.