Amudhavali & Ors. v. P. Rukumani & Ors.
Background
Amudhavali and others claimed to have bought land in Coimbatore through a registered sale deed executed by the original owners' power-of-attorney holder in 2005. The original owners later unilaterally registered a deed cancelling that sale and also filed a civil suit asking the court to declare the sale deed void. The buyers, instead of only contesting the civil suit, separately filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court challenging the cancellation deed; the Single Judge ruled in their favour, but the Division Bench overturned that, holding the matter should be left to the pending civil suit.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court declined to go into whether the unilateral cancellation deed was legally valid, noting that the buyers had already filed a written statement in the civil suit (O.S. No.142 of 2008) raising exactly this question, and that a registered document's validity is always subject to adjudication by the competent civil court. Since a civil suit on the very same dispute was already pending, the Court held it was not appropriate for the writ court to have intervened. The appeal was disposed of by directing that the rights of the parties over the land be decided in the pending civil suit, that the suit be resolved within about a year, and that the parties maintain status quo over possession in the meantime.
Lesson Learnt
Where a civil suit on the exact same property dispute is already pending and a party has joined that suit, the Supreme Court will generally decline to short-circuit that process through writ jurisdiction: factual property disputes are for civil courts to resolve on evidence, not for writ courts to pre-decide.