Parth Wadikar, MNLU Mumbai
Introduction
The functional definition of the word possession is the fact that you have or own something or something that you own or that you are carrying with you at a particular time1. While Merriam- webster defines the same to be control or occupancy of property without regard to ownership.
While these definitions are usable in real life, the same cannot be used for legal matters as they disregard ownership. Hence they consider ownership to be inclusive of possession while in law they are mutually exclusive. These definitions are also very vague while laws and legal definitions try to go towards specificity and exactness as that lessens the chance of arbitrary decisions being made. A great example of the same would be the definition given by the Britannica Encyclopedia: possession, in law, the acquisition of either a considerable degree of physical control over a physical thing, such as land or chattel, or the legal right to control intangible property, such as a credit—with the definite intention of ownership.3 While ignoring the “intention of ownership”, this definition is usable as it uses the term “control” hence specifying not just holding a property but also having control over the held property. This definition however, is a British one.
