GAYA PRASAD SAH Vs. RAM PRASAD PATHAK

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These appeals arise out of a suit for redemption of a bharna or usufructuary mortgage of brit rights executed in December 1896. Defendants 1 and 2 are sons of the original bharnadar, and defendants 3 to 5 are his grandsons, defendants 3 and 4 being sons of defendant 1. There was a partition in the family of the defendants of the original bharnadar, in accordance with which the bharna fell to the share of defendant 1 and his sons. Defendants 1, 3 and 4 are the appellants in Second Appeal No. 990, while defendant 2 is the appellant in Second Appeal No. 960 before me.

(2.) The former appeal is concerned with four plots numbered 2396, 2389, 2390 and 2597 at the Revisional Survey, while the latter is concerned with plots Nos. 2395, 2216, 2391 and 2392. Of these eight plots, two, namely Nos. 2389 and 2390, are raiyati plots, while the other six plots were shown in the Cadastral Record of Rights in the gairmazrua-am khata with houses and the possession of certain people noted in the remarks column. The appellants claimed to have acquired these eight plots, mostly by purchase.

(3.) In fact, the only exception is a part of plot No. 2395, which in the Cadastral Survey was numbered 2168, as to which their defence was that the plot had been abandoned by one Mangar Kunjra and thereupon settled by defendant 1 with defendant 2. The lower Appellate Court has held that the appellants, as representing the bharnadar, are entitled to compensation in respect of the two raiyati plots Nos. 2389 and 2390, but that as regards the other six plots with which I am concerned, they are not entitled either to keep the plots or to any compensation for them, because their purchases were purchases of an interest which is described as the interest of a licensee, or tenant-at-will, or as otherwise not binding upon the landlord.