The main legal point established in the judgment is that the right to water does not cease when it flows outside a confined water-course, and the obstruction of water flow by others without justification is unlawful.

1. In this case the plaintiff asked for a declaration of his right to take water through a channel for the cultivation of certain land belonging to him and for an injunction restraining the defendants from obstructing the course of the channel. The lands both of the plaintiff and defendants are situated in a proprietary estate. According to the plaintiff a river channel supplied the means of irrigation for the lands of the parties and other ryots who had lands alongside the stream. A branch leading from the main channel passed through the lands of the defendants Nos. 1, 2 and 3 and then the fourth defendants, land and, according to the plaintiff, afterwards reached his own land. Defendants Nos. 1, 2 and 3 are alleged to have blocked up the channel at a point higher than the fourth defendants land. They contended that the channel never irrigated the lands either of the fourth defendant or of the plaintiff, and that it stopped somewhere near their own lands. The fourth defendant did not contest the suit.

2. The facts found by the Lower Appellate Court, as we understand the judgment of the District Judge, are:--that the channel in question continued, as a definite water-course, up to the fourth defendants lands, and that the water of the channel flowed over the bands of the fourth defendants fields and joined another channel which irrigated the plaintiffs lands.

3. The District Munsif held that the plaintiff was entitled to the flow of the channel water along the fourth defendants lands to the channel which was the direct source of irrigation for his land, and that the contesting defendants were not entitled to interfere with the flow. On appeal the District Judge held that, as the water of the stream did not flow direct to the plain tiffs land in aT1y defined course, it must he taken that it was not intended-to supply water to the plaintiffs land. He regarded the water as it flowed from the fourth defendants land over his bunds as mere surface drainage and was of opinion that the plaintiff could not claim any legal right to it. He, consequently, dismissed the plaintiffs suit.

4. The question argued in Second Appeal is whether the plaintiff is not entitled to the customary flow of the water of the stream A-l along the fourth defendants field until it joined the channel which supplied water to his own field. There was, according to the finding of the Appellate Court, no definite water-course across the fourth defendants field, the water-course ceasing to have any definite bed and banks after it reached the fourth defendants field. We must also take it, on the findings, that the water in the stream was not always sufficient to irrigate the lands of the fourth defendant or to supply a flow to the plaintiffs channel. But this we regard as immaterial; such is the case with many streams and channel in this country. It is also immaterial that the water of the stream flowing through the fourth defendants land did not reach the plaintiffs land direct but joined another channel out of which the plaintiff got his water. If the water of the stream supplied a means of irrigation to the plaintiff, it is immaterial whether it did so by directly reaching the plaintiffs land or indirectly by Sowing into another channel.

5. The substantial question for decision is whether the fact that there was no defined channel across the fourth defendants field but that the stream spread itself all along the field and overflowed the bunds to reach the plaintiffs channel puts the plaintiff out of Court. The question is one of considerable importance in this country. It was stated by the learned vakil for the appellant, and we believe with good reason that irrigation channels do not always go direct to every field irrigated by them and that the water often flows from one field to another, either through cuts made in the bund of the field or by overflowing the band. And he submitted that it would be disastrous if it should be held that the owners of fields on