JUDGMENT

CHANDRACHUD, J.:— This 22-year old litigation concerns the right of two adjacent owners to catch prawns on their respective lands.

2. Survey No. 673 of Kadamkudi, District Ernakulam, measuring about 11 acres originally belonged to the Cochin Government but by diverse transfers the title thereto is now vested in the appellant, Lonankutty. The land is bounded on the West and South by a river. A portion of the land on the North-East can be put to agricultural use for a part of the year but the land, by and large, is water-logged and can profitably be used for prawn-fishing. In order to make fishing feasible, the appellant has constructed a bund on the western side of the land for arresting the flow of the river water. The contrivance is calculated to 1647 permit collection of water on the land, almost to the point of submerging it. The prawns enter the land with the high tide, they breed and multiply on the land and the water while receding leaves the prawns behind. The appellant then catches them, presumably under a licence from the Government of Kerala.

3. Survey Nos. 672, 677, 655/4 and 670 which sprawl on all sides of survey No. 673 belong to the respondents: Thomman and his mother Annam. We are concerned with the prescriptive rights claimed by them in respect of survey No. 672 which is situated towards the north-east of survey No. 673. Survey No. 672 is almost land-locked and between it and the river on the south stands the vast expanse of survey No. 673 belonging to the appellant.

4. Prawns have an export value and catching them is so much more profitable than growing food-crops. But the respondents land being land-locked, they have no direct access to the river on the west or the south. They cannot therefore do any fishing operations because, for prawn-fishing it is necessary that the river-water must enter their land, and collect on it so that after the prawns have bred the water can be released back to the river. For achieving this result, respondents constructed a bund with sluice-gates on the border between their land and survey No. 673. Their case is that they have a prescriptive easement to take water from the appellants land and to divert it back through the same land both for fishing and agriculture. The appellant has grave objection to permitting the respondents to engage thus in prawn-fishing because along with the water which would pass from his land (survey No. 673) to the respondents land (survey No. 672), prawns also would pass. And when the water would be released back from survey No. 672 through the sluice-gate, survey No. 673 would get flooded, carrying back the prawns left on his land, to the river on the south. This is the genesis of the dispute between the parties.

5. The appellant filed Civil Suit No. 666 of 1954 against the respondents for a perpetual injunction restraining them from taking water from survey No. 673, from discharging the water back through survey Number 673, and for a mandatory injunction directing them to demolish the bund and close the sluice-gates. The appellant disputed the right claimed by the respondents in its entirety, contending that they had no right to the flow of water either way for either purpose - fishing or agriculture.

6. The respondents filed Civil Suit No. 5 of 1957 for an injunction restraining the appellant from trespassing on the bund constructed by them and for preventing the appellant from interfering with their right to take water from Survey No. 673 and to discharge the water back through that land. Respondents claimed this prescriptive right for fishing as well as for agricultural purposes.

7. Both the suits were instituted in the court of the Munsiff of Cochin but in view of the timelag between their respective institution, they were tried and disposed of separately. By a judgment dated September 20, 1957 the learned Munsiff decreed the appellants suit (No. 666 of 1954) partly, granting an injunction against the respondents to the effect that they had no