BROOME, J. :- This second appeal has been referred to us at the instance of a learned Single Judge, who felt that an authoritative decision was called for as to the combined effect of Sections 15, 45 and 51 of the Easements Act.

2. The suit out of which this appeal arises is for a perpetual injunction to restrain the defendants from interfering with the discharge of rain-water through certain spouts (parnalas) that open from the plaintiffs roof on to their land. From the findings of fact given by the Courts below it appears that when the plaintiff purchased the house in 1965, it was a mere rum, having collapsed 5 or 6 years before; but previously, when the house was standing, the plaintiff's predecessors had been discharging rain-water on to the defendants' land from the roof of the house through parnalas for more than 20 years. The learned Munsif of Muzaffarnagar held that they had thus acquired a prescriptive easementary right and on this finding decreed the suit. But in appeal the learned Second Additional Civil Judge of Muzaffarnagar found that though a prescriptive easementary right had been earlier acquired, it had not been exercised for the five or six years immediately preceding the suit, as during that time the house was a roofless ruin and no water could be discharged on to the defendants' land. He acordingly held that the suit could not succeed, because the easement claimed by the plaintiff had not been enjoyed within the two years next before the institution of the suit, as required by the fifth paragraph of Section 15 of the Easements Act. The appeal was therefore, allowed and the suit dismissed.

3. Mr. Ojha, who appears for the plaintiff-appellant, has first of all attempted to argue that since, according to the findings of the Courts below, the easementary right had already been acquired earlier, the case is covered by Sections 45 and 51 of the Easements Act. The collapse of the house resulted in extinction of the easement within the meaning of Section 45 of the Act (which says that "an easement is extinguished when either the dominant or the servient heritage is completely destroyed"); but, he contends, the easement was subsequently restored under Cl. (c) of Section 51, which lays down:

"An easement extinguished under Section 45 revives..................(c) when the destroyed heritage is a dominant building and before 20 years have expired such building is rebuilt upon the same site and in such a manner as not to impose a greater, burden on the servient heritage."

In the present case the finding is that the house constituting the dominant heritage remained in a collapsed and roofless stage for only 5 or 6 years and then the plaintiff purchased the property and rebuilt the house, long before the period of 20 years mentioned in Section 51 had elapsed.

4. The fallacy in this line of argument, however, is that it assumes that an absolute right of easement was in existence at the time when the house collapsed. If there was no such absolute right in existence, there could be no question of its extinction and the provisions of Sections 45 and 51 would not be attracted; and it appears to us that the finding recorded by the Courts below that the plaintiff's predecessors had acquired an absolute easementary right by prescription was wrong. Such a right can only be acquired under the provisions of Section 15 of the Act, the relevant portions of which run as follows:-

"............When a right of way or any other easement has been peaceably and openly enjoyed by any person claiming title thereto, as an easement and as of right, without interruption, and for twenty years, the right to such ......... other easement shall be absolute. Each of the said periods of twenty years shall be taken to be a period ending within two years next before the institution of the suit wherein the claim to which such period relates is contested."

In view of the wording of this section, it cannot be said that enjoyment of an easement for any