33 ~ 



limits and hence that no jurisdiction could affect any 

 action at that place. 



In the judgment of the court as reported in the 

 Madras Law Journal (Vol. XIV, No. 7 Madras, July 

 1904), it was declared that — 



{a) Palk's Bay, where the bed is situated being a 

 land-locked arm of the sea, surrounded on all sides by 

 territory under the rule of the King-Emperor, cannot be 

 regarded as the high sea ; within this Bay, no part of the 

 water area can, therefore, be outside the territorial juris- 

 diction of the Government of India whose predecessors 

 have granted a limited right, that of fishing chanks 

 therein within certain limits, to the Raja of Ramnad or 

 his assignees. 



{b) Chanks are not fish. They are not ferae 

 naturae, but are domitae naturae and are to be placed in 

 the same category as oysters and so may become the 

 subject of theft. 



(<:) Further, the effective exercise of the right to fish 

 and lease these chanic beds had been exercised by the 

 Raja of Ramnad and his predecessors both while they 

 were feudatory chiefs prior to 1803 and since then as 

 zamindars under a permanent settlement which included 

 the chank fishery revenue as one of the heads of revenue 

 upon which the peshkash was calculated. This effective 

 occupation, reinforced by explicit Government sanction, 

 would of itself confer a prescriptive right to the fishery. 



The judgment further stated that, as the Gulf of 

 Mannar is also similarly situated to Palk Bay, chanks 

 in the chank beds of that gulf may also be the subject of 

 theft. The court held indeed that if the beds from which 

 the chanks were taken had been off that part of the coast 

 of Ramnad situated in the Gulf of Mannar their decision 

 would have been the same, since the evidence of effective 

 occupation of the chank beds in both localities {i.e., in 

 Palk Bay and the Gulf) is similar. 



At the present time the Ramnad fishery is leased for 

 Rs. 4,060, which represents rather more than the average 

 of the past 30 years (Rs. 3,047-7-6) as shown by the table 

 of annual revenue included in the appendix. 



The Sivaganga cha^ik fishery is of little importance, 

 its lease seldom realizing more than Rs. 100 or Rs. 200 

 per annum. A tabulation of the annual revenue 



