Court caseAIR 1968 SC 1165

The plaintiff had for many years been in open and peaceful possession of a stretch of land in Kerala which he had cleared and cultivated, though the paper title lay with the State. The defendant Society, claiming under a later grant from the Government, entered the land and forcibly turned him out. He sued for recovery of possession on the strength of his prior possession alone, well after the six months allowed by the summary remedy had run, so the suit was an ordinary suit for possession and not one under the summary section.

The Supreme Court held for the plaintiff. Possession is itself a title good against the whole world except the true owner. A person in peaceful possession who is ousted by a trespasser may recover possession from him on the strength of that prior possession, and the trespasser cannot plead jus tertii (that some third person, here the State, is the real owner) unless he shows that he himself claims under that title. The true owner must come to court; even he may not take the law into his own hands.