Possession Concept of Possession

You park your scooter outside a Vashi market and walk in for ten minutes. Somebody else drives it away. Who was in possession while you were inside: you, or nobody? And if a stranger found your lost phone on a train seat and kept it, could he refuse to hand it over to the next person who asked for it, but not to you? Possession is the most basic relation between a person and a thing, and law keeps asking the same questions about it: what is it, when does it begin, and why protect it at all, even when the person holding the thing may not be its owner?

In two minutes

Possession is effective control over a thing coupled with the intention to hold it as one's own (or for another), protected by law even against a true owner in some cases, because it keeps the peace and because it is the outward sign of ownership.

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