Source: https://www.legalindia.com/judgments/satku-valad-kadir-sausare-vs-ibrahim-aga-valad-mirza-aga-on-12-december-1877
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 14:24:26+00:00

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Posted On December 12, 1877 by &filed under Bombay High Court, High Court.
1. The plaintiffs, who are Mussulmans, sue to establish their alleged right to carry tabuts in procession along a certain road for immersion in the sea. They aver that the defendants have obstructed them in so doing, and that the Magistrate, at the instance of the defendants, has made an order prohibiting the plaintiffs from using the road for that purpose.
2. This claim is resisted by the defendants, also Mussulmans, who allege that the road, along which the plaintiffs wish to carry their tabuts, passes through the mohola (quarter of the town) of the defendants, and close to their musjid, and that the plaintiffs have no right of way along that road, but that there is another and a public road, whereby the sea is accessible to them, which road they have hitherto used for the same purpose.
3. The defendants also relied upon the law of limitation.
4. The Subordinate Judge found that the suit was barred by that law. The District Judge reversed his decision, and held that the suit was not so barred.
5. The present appeal is against that reversal. It is, for the appellant, contended that not only is the suit barred by lapse of time, but that the plaintiffs have not any cause of action. We deem it unnecessary to decide the question of limitation.
6. Both of the Courts below have found, as a fact, that the road, along which the plaintiffs desire to convey their tabuts to the sea, is a public road.
7. There cannot be any doubt that Her Majesty’s subjects at large, as well in India as in England, have the right to pass and repass along a public highway, whether it come under the denomination of regia via or communis strata so long as they do so peaceably and properly.
8. But, speaking generally, no action can, in England, be maintained for a public injury. Therefore, an action does not lie for obstructing a man’s passage in a highway, because, ordinarily, he has no more damage than others of the Queen’s subjects; but the party causing the obstruction must be proceeded against by indictment. If, however, the person has sustained more particular damage by the nuisance than the public in general, as if any accident occur to him, or he be obliged to go to a greater distance and be thereby put to an expense in the conveyance of his goods or otherwise, then he may sue the party causing it. Lord COKE says with his accustomed quaintness: “But here is to be observed a diversity between a private way, whereof Littleton here speaketh, and a common way. For if the way be a common way, if any man be disturbed to go that way, or if a ditch be made overthwart the way so as he cannot go, yet shall he not have an action upon his case; and this the law provided for avoiding of multiplicity of suits; for, if any one man might have an action, all men might have the like. But the law for this common nuisance hath provided an apt remedy, and that is by presentment in the leet or in the tourn, unless any man hath a particular damage: as if he and his horse fall into the ditch, whereby he received hurt and loss, there, for this special damage, which is not common to others, he shall have an action upon his case; and all this was resolved by the Court in the King’s Bench.” For both of these propositions of Lord Coke, authority, so early as the Year Books (5 Edw. IV. 2 (b) and 27 Hen. VIII, p. 27) exists. In Fineux v. Hovenden (Cro. Eliz., 664), Lord COKE (then Attorney General), as counsel for the defendant in an action on the case for an obstruction in a street in Canterbury, succeeded in convincing Popham, C.J., Gawdy and Fenner JJ., in the Queen’s Bench in Easter Term 41 Eliz., that “without a special grief shown by the plaintiff the action lies not.” There is a general concurrence of authorities that there must be some particular damage to the plaintiff more than to the public in order to render the action maintainable. There is, however, some conflict as to what constitutes a sufficient particular damage.
9. Amongst the instances in which the damage alleged has been held insufficient, are the following: An anonymous case in Moore, p. 180, pl. 321; Easter T. 26 Eliz.; and Stone v. Wakeman (Noy. R. 120; Easter 5 Jac.) in neither of which cases does any particular damage appear to have been alleged, Paine v. Patrick (3 Mod. 289; T.C. Carthew, 191, 194; Comberbach 180), was an action for not keeping a ferry-boat, and no damage was alleged, except that the plaintiff thereby lost his passage across the ferry. There all of the Judges “agreed that a passage over the water was of the same nature as a highway, and that a ferry is for the common good” (Carthew 193). “And as concerning special damages sufficient to maintain an action on the case, it was resolved, that if a highway is so stopped that a man is delayed in. his journey a little while and by reason thereof he is damnified, or some important affair neglected, this is not such a special damage for which an action on the case will lie; but a particular damage to maintain this action ought to be direct and not consequential; as, for instance, the loss of his horse, or by some corporal hurt, in falling into a trench in the highway” (Carthew 194). In Hubert v. Groves (1 Esq., 148) an action for obstructing a highway (Dean Street) by laying several cart-loads of soil and rubbish upon it, and thus impeding the plaintiff, a coal and timber merchant, who had a house in the street, in “enjoying his premises and carrying on his trade in so advantageous a manner as he had a right to do, and by’ which the plaintiff was obliged to carry his coal and timber, &c., by a circuitous and inconvenient way,” Lord Kenyon, C.J., non-suited the plaintiff, being of opinion that “the grievance was not of that description which entitled the party to maintain an action; that it was an injury to the king’s highway, a public nuisance, and the party’s remedy by indictment only.” A new trial was refused by the Court in banc.
11. In Wilkes v. The Hungerford Market Company (2 Bing. N.C., 281; S.C., 2 Scott 446), the plaintiff, a bookseller, having a shop by the side of a public thoroughfare, suffered loss in his business in consequence of passengers having been diverted from the thoroughfare by defendants continuing an authorized obstruction across it for an unreasonable time; the Court of Common Pleas held that this damage was of a sufficiently particular nature to form the subject of an action. An earlier case, very much resembling that case, was Baker v. Moore, decided in Hil. T. 8 William III in the Common Pleas, and mentioned by Gould, J., in Iveson v. Moore (1 Ld. Raymond 486; Section c. 12 Mod. 262). It (Baker v. Moore) was an action on the case for erecting a wall across a common way at Lambeth, in consequence of which the tenants of certain houses of the plaintiff departed, and the plaintiff lost the profits of his houses, and the Court held that to be a sufficient particular damage to support the action.
14. The rules applicable to a highway on land are also to a highway across or along water. We have already mentioned what was said of a public ferry in Paine v. Patrick (3 Mod. 289). In Rone v. Miles (4 M. & S. 101) the plaintiff declared that he was navigating his barges laden with goods along a public navigable creek, and that the defendant wrongfully moored a barge across, and kept the same so moored, from thence hitherto, and thereby the plaintiff was prevented from navigating his barges so laden, whereby the plaintiff was obliged to convey his goods a great distance over land, and was put to trouble and expense in the carriage of his goods over land. This was held by Lord Ellenborough, C.J., BAYLEY and Dampier, JJ., to disclose such a particular damage as would uphold an action on the case.
15. It has been said that to support such an action there must be no want of ordinary care on the part of the plaintiff to avoid the obstruction–Butterfield v. Forrester (11 Bast, 60 per Lord Ellenborough), Marriott v. Stanley (1 Scott, N.R., 392).
16. The Indian Courts have adopted the English law on this subject. In Baroda Prasad Mostafi v. Gora Chand Mostafi (3 Beng. L.R., 295, A.C.J.; S.C. 12 Cal. W.R., 160 Civ. Rul.), Peacock, C.J., Mitter, J., held that even a person, who was one of several who had dedicated a road to the public, could not maintain a civil suit, in respect of an obstruction of that road, unless he had sustained some particular inconvenience in consequence of that obstruction. To the same effect are Bhugeeruth Dass v. Chundee Churn (22 Cal. W.R. 463 Civ. Rul.) and Raj Luckhee Debia v. Chunder Kant Choudry (14 Cal. W.R. 173 Civ. Rul.). In Kahanji Jetha v. Manor Chatoor (Special Appeal 378 of 1870), the plaintiff complained of the erection, by the defendant, of a step on a public road. The High Court here, on the 5th December 1870, directed an issue as to whether the existence of the step caused such special injury to the plaintiff as to give him a cause of action. It was found in the negative, and accordingly on the 20th March 1871, LLOYD and Kemball, JJ., dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal. In Gehanaji and others v. Ganpati and others (Special Appeal No. 3 of 1875; see note post, p. 469), the plaintiffs complained of the building, by the defendants, of a wall upon land used by all of the villagers as a market and play-ground, and which the plaintiffs alleged to be public. They did not aver any particular inconvenience to themselves beyond what the other villagers suffered. A Division Court here, consisting of Mr. Justice NANABHAI HARIDAS and one of the members of this Court, affirmed the decrees of the Courts below dismissing the suit.
17. In the recent Yerangal fishery case, Baban Mayacha v. Nagu Shravucha (I.L.R. 2 Bom., 19), the plaintiffs complained of being obstructed in their exercise, as members of the public, of the right of fishing in the open sea off Yerangal, the defendants having, contrary to the custom of the locality, planted their fishing stakes and nets thereon extended so near to those of the plaintiffs as to prevent fish from getting into the nets of the plaintiffs extended on their fishing stakes, which had been fixed previously to those of the defendants, and that the defendants had thus occasioned to the plaintiffs considerable pecuniary loss, viz., to the extent of Rs. (3,000) three thousand. A Division Court here, consisting of Mr. Justice NANABHAI HARIDAS and one of the members of the present Court, held that to be a sufficient allegation of particular damage to render the plaint prima facie sustainable.
18. A Court of Equity, when private individuals suffer an injury quite distinct from that of the public in general, in consequence of a public nuisance, will grant an injunction and such relief as may compel the wrong-doer to take active measures to discontinue the nuisance–Spencer v. London and Birmingham Railway Company (8 Sim. 193), Crowder v. Tinkle (19 Ves. 617), Soltau v. De Held (2 Sim. N.S. 133, S.C. 21 L.J. Ch. N.S. 153), Attorney-General v. Forbes (2 My. & Cr. 123). And see the cases cited in 2 Story Eq. Jur. 11th edn., pp. 110 to 114, pl. 923 to 925 et in notis.
19. Although a civil action is not open to a person not sustaining particular damage from an obstruction of a public highway on land or water or other public nuisance, he may, if the circumstances justify it, have recourse to the criminal law: ex. gr. he may charge the guilty party under such section of chap. XIV of the Indian Penal Code as may be applicable to the case; or, if the obstruction has been accompanied by hurt, criminal force, or criminal intimidation, resort may be had to the sections in the same Code applicable to such cases.
20. We do not, however, gather from the plaint that any personal violence has been inflicted on the plaintiff’s by the defendants.
21. There is not in the plaint any allegation of personal loss or injury to the plaintiffs arising from the obstruction. The mere absence of the religious or sentimental gratification arising from carrying tabuts along a certain public road is not any such particular loss or injury as the precedents, English or Indian, would justify us in pronouncing to be such a damage as would sustain a civil action.
22. We must, accordingly, reverse the decree of the District Judge, and make a decree for the defendants. The parties, respectively, must bear their costs of the suit and of both appeals. While regretting that they should both be deprived of the pleasure of annually carrying their tabuts in procession for immersion in the sea according to their wonted custom, we must counsel obedience to the discreet orders of the Magistrates–issued, no doubt, under Section 518 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in order to prevent the occurrence of any riot or breach of the peace, which, so long as the parties are animated with hostile feeling towards each other, is possible, if either party be permitted to indulge in a public ceremonial in a particular quarter of the town objected to by the other. We further advise the parties to come to some mutual understanding on the subject, and we have no doubt that, when they have satisfied the Magistrate that the tabuts may be carried peacefully along the public roads, he will withdraw the inhibition which he has felt it necessary to issue.

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