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Issues: (i) whether the petitioners established enforceable customary rights to perform religious rites, observances and ceremonies on the disputed plots and structures; (ii) whether the earlier civil decrees and waqf registrations conclusively supported those rights and bound the rival community; and (iii) whether an order under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 could be used to prohibit the lawful exercise of such established rights.
Issue (i): Whether the petitioners established enforceable customary rights to perform religious rites, observances and ceremonies on the disputed plots and structures.
Analysis: The claimed rights were not treated as depending solely on title to the land or structures. The decisive question was whether the Shia community had an established and subsisting customary entitlement to hold religious meetings, processions and related observances on the properties in question. The Court found that the evidence of long user, the prior representative litigation and the waqf material showed that the Shias had been exercising these religious rights from time immemorial.
Conclusion: The petitioners established enforceable customary rights over the plots and structures, subject to the exclusion of the recitation and utterance of Tabarra.
Issue (ii): Whether the earlier civil decrees and waqf registrations conclusively supported those rights and bound the rival community.
Analysis: The prior representative civil litigation between the two sects had finally determined, on merits, the Shias' entitlement to the relevant religious user on the disputed properties and had rejected the rival claims inconsistent with that entitlement. The Court also held that the survey report and subsequent notification under the U.P. Muslim Wakfs Act, 1936 had attained finality, and that the Shia Board's registrations under the statute reinforced the established rights. The later Sunni notification was found unpersuasive and ineffective to displace the earlier final position.
Conclusion: The earlier decrees and wakf registrations bound the rival community and confirmed the Shias' established customary rights.
Issue (iii): Whether an order under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 could be used to prohibit the lawful exercise of such established rights.
Analysis: The power under Section 144 was characterised as an executive preventive power meant to preserve public peace and tranquillity, not as a jurisdiction to decide civil title or extinguish already established legal rights. Where rights have already been judicially determined, the authority must act in aid of those rights and against those who unlawfully interfere with them. A blanket prohibition that suppresses lawful religious observance, instead of securing the lawful exercise of rights by taking preventive measures against likely wrongdoers, was held to be an improper use of the power.
Conclusion: Section 144 could not be used to suppress the petitioners' established customary rights, and any future exercise of that power had to conform to the stated guidelines.
Final Conclusion: The petition was allowed, the Shia community's customary religious rights on the disputed properties were affirmed, interference by the rival community was permanently restrained, and the local executive authorities were directed to exercise preventive powers consistently with those rights.
Ratio Decidendi: Established customary religious rights, once conclusively determined by competent civil adjudication and supported by final statutory waqf recognition, cannot be overridden by preventive executive action under Section 144; such power must be exercised in aid of the lawful rights and not for their suppression.
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