UDIT NARAIN SINGH Vs. GOLABCHAND SAHU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiffs and present appellants are maliks of the village of Chitnawan, and the defendants and present respondents are maliks of the village of Ganghara.

(2.) IN 1843 the two villages were separated by the river Ganges, Ganghara lying on the northern, and Chitnawan on the southern, shore of the river.

(3.) IN 1859 the Ganges receded northwards, and all that remained of it in its ancient site was a dead stream or stagnant pool known as the Dhab; and between that and the new bed of the Ganges to the north there was formed a diara or mass of alluvial deposit which seems to have emerged from the face of the waters about the year 1860. This diara included the lands now in controversy. When the land emerged it was taken possession of by the maliks of Magarpal, a village to the north-west of Chitnawan. The maliks of Chitnawan thereupon sued those of Magarpal for possession of the land in controversy, apparently founding their claim on the custom of dhar-dhura, i.e., a supposed right of a riparian owner to follow the receding bank of the river and to claim all land between the old and the new shore. In this claim the maliks of Chitnawan were successful, and on the 15th June 1869 the High Court affirmed a decree of the inferior Court, whereby they were held entitled to recover 597 bighas of land; and on the 26th September 1869 possession was duly delivered to the plaintiffs' predecessors in title, not only of the decreed lands, but of other land which had during the pendency of the litigation been added to them by the further retreat northward of the river's course. The lands then delivered to the maliks of Chitnawan include the lands now in controversy; and the plaintiffs start with their possession on this 26th September 1869 as the terminus from which they seek to make out their title by possession.