F E CHRESTIEN Vs. CARTER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in revision against an order passed against the petitioner, as first party in a proceeding under Section 144, Criminal P.C., requiring him to abstain from going to a certain plot of land which he purchased in November last and from altering its present condition by building, as he proposed to do, a mica godown on it. The petitioner, Mr. F.E. Chrestien, is a mica trader with whose name one is familiar from the law reports. The opposite party is a manager or servant of the Maha. raja Bahadur of Gidhour. Mr. Chrestien appears to have purchased and taken a Court dakhal dehani of the Chakia estate in 1934. The Maharaja Bahadur of Gidhour had purchased widow's estate in this property, but that estate came to an end in 1907. He claims however to have had a mukarrari interest in the estate since 1888 and his contention was that by reason of the mukarrari Mr. Chrestien is not entitled to recover any rents from the raiyats of the village Batia which is a part of the Chakia estate and in which the land in dispute lies.

(2.) When Mr. Chrestien, by his manager Belong, proceeded to build on the plot in question (41 out of 71 of plot No. 1362) Mr. Carter, the opposite party, as the learned Magistrate puts it, saw in this move the seed of a serious trouble between the Maharaja Bahadur and Mr. Chrestien." There had been previous litigation between the parties, in which the question of the mukarrari claimed by the Maharaja was left open by mutual consent of the parties; and the learned Magistrate says that "there has been no decision of a competent Court between the Maharaja and Mr. Chrestien" on the validity of the Maharaja Bahadur's claim as a mukarraridar. On the strength of his alleged possession however, the Maha. raja Bahadur suspected the move of Mr. Chrestien in the making of what he calls a mica godown, and apprehended that Mr. Chrestien was simply trying to enter the village on some pretest with the real intention of taking possession of the village. This position of the Maharaja Bahadur was accepted by the trying Magistrate who said in his judgment that if Mr. Chrestien had stated that he had no other intention but to start a mica godown, the matter would have been clear and no order under Section 144, Criminal P.C. would have been necessary.

(3.) But on the ground that the mica godown was only a pretext, "certainly a very doubtful move" in consequence of which the Maharaja Bahadur "naturally smells some trouble," the learned Magistrate considered it best to "maintain the status quo and leave the real issue to be fought out in Court," adding that the best way of avoiding a real clash between the rival claimants is to stop the doing of a new thing which might occasion a trouble.