Sir George Rankin:-

This suit concerns a plot of land in Mohalla Begumganj in the City of Lucknow measuring between seven and eight biswas. The purpose of the suit is to establish that this plot of land is a graveyard in the sense of the Mahomedan law, that is to say extra commercium and dedicated for the benefit of Mahomedans in general in such sense that private ownership therein does not exist. The suit is a representative suit, the plaintiffs having obtained an order under O. 1, R. 8, Civil PC. Their grievance against defendant 1, Ballabh Das, is that by a deed dated 1st February 1928, he purported to take a transfer of this land from defendant 4, Mt. Musaheb Khanam, who conveyed the land to him professing to have derived title thereto from one Kale Khan. The plaintiffs' claim against defendants 2 and 3 is nowhere clearly stated, but at the trial the case made against them was that they had encroached upon the land in suit by the erection of a wall and door as additions to a house which abuts upon the land. The defendants, while not denying that in 1868 and prior thereto some few persons had been buried in the land, nor that in 1870 the land was closed for the purposes of a ceme