HARIHAR BANERJI Vs. RAMSASHI RAY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal against a decree of the High Court of Judicature at Fort William, Bengal, dated the 16th April, 1915, which dismissed an appeal from the Subordinate Court of Hooghly, dated the 19th May 1914.

(2.) The action out of which the appeal has arisen is one of ejectment brought not by owners or occupiers of land against persons trespassing upon it, but by landlords of a particular piece of land against their former tenants of the same to recover possession thereof on the ground that the tenancy of those tenants has been determined by an effective notice to quit duly served.

(3.) Two sets of defendants have been named in the plaint, the first containing the names of seven persons named Banerji, some of whom were, and still are, members of a joint Hindu family; others were once such members and have ceased to be so. For convenience these are styled the principal defendants, and are alleged by the plaintiffs to have been their tenants from year to year of the piece of land mentioned up to the service of the aforesaid notice to quit. The second set of defendants consists of three limited companies-two milling companies, numbered 8 and 9 respectively; Andrew Yule (Limited), timber merchants, the managing agents of the two first-named companies, and numbered 10, and a firm named Amrita Lal Ghose and Sons, numbered 11. These latter defendants, Nos. 8, 9,10, and 11, are stated to be the sub-tenants of the principal defendants, and being in the possession of the above- mentioned piece of land are made pro forma defendants. In the third paragraph of the appellants case it is in effect stated that the only questions in the case which have up to the present been decided are-first, the question whether, assuming that the principal defendants were the tenants of the plaintiffs, of the aforesaid piece of land from year to year, the notice to quit alleged to have been served upon them was sufficient and proper in form ; and, second, the question whether it had been duly served. The Munsiff in whose Court the suit was filed decided both these questions in favour of the defendants, and on this ground dismissed the suit. His decision was reversed upon appeal by the Subordinate Judge, and it was by him ordered that the case be sent back to the lower, i. e., the Munsiff s Court, with a direction to remit the suit to its original number, and to proceed to try the issues raised in the suit other than issue No. 2, and determine the suit after giving the parties due opportunity for adducing evidence,