SRIJUKTA SARAJUBALA DEBI CHOWDHURANI Vs. SARADANATH BHATTACHARJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These three appeals arise out of two counter-suits brought on a contract entered into between the parties or rather by their predecessors-in-interest on the 30th Baisakh 1313 and registered on the 15th May of 1906.

(2.) By the deed the predecessor of the plaintiffs in Suit No, 134/52 (Appeal No. 67), who may be compendiously described as the Bhawal Raj, conferred upon one Biswanath Bhattacharjee the right to fell and remove Guzari or sal trees of a certain girth and other miscellaneous trees, not being fruit trees, from the "Garhs" or forests lying within the Mouzas appertaining to their Zemindari No. 9 and also from the Garhs lying within certain Mouzas included in Sikmi Taluk Baidya Nath Sen appertaining to Zemindari No. 10. The contract, which may be spoken of as a lease, also provided that the grantee should have the right to out and remove trees of specified classes from the Jote lands of tenants, and the grantor further undertook to provide convenient sites for roads, residential quarters, offices, storage and export depots, to take appropriate measures against, and pay compensation for, loss incurred by reason of obstruction or dispossession, the acts whether of tenants or third parties. The term was a period of five years beginning from the 1st Baisakh 1313, and of the consideration Rs. 80,000, Rs. 20,000 having been paid in advance and the balance Rs. 60,000 was to be paid in four instalments in the month of Assin in each of the years 1313--16.

(3.) In their suit, after giving credit for sums paid, the Bhawal Raj claim a sum of Rs. 71,770 by way of arrears unpaid with interest at the stipulated rate.