Arshnoor Singh v. Harpal Kaur
Background
The appellant's father, Dharam Singh, sold ancestral agricultural land to Respondent No. 1 through two sale deeds in 1999 for no actual consideration, both parties later admitted before the Collector that no money changed hands, shortly before Dharam Singh married Respondent No. 1. The appellant, who became a coparcener in this ancestral property at birth, sued for a declaration that the sale deeds were void since his father had no legal necessity to sell. The trial court and first appellate court agreed, but the Punjab & Haryana High Court reversed, holding the appellant had no standing to challenge the sales.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that property inherited through at least three generations under Mitakshara Hindu law remains coparcenary property as against male descendants, even after an earlier partition, so the appellant became a coparcener in the suit land the moment he was born. Since the sale deeds were admittedly executed without any consideration and without any proof of legal necessity or benefit to the family estate, they were void from the start, meaning a subsequent 2007 sale to further buyers (which also happened while the lawsuit was pending, invoking the doctrine of lis pendens) was equally invalid. The Court restored the trial court's decree, cancelled both sets of sale deeds, and ordered the appellant's name recorded as owner.
Lesson Learnt
A child born into a Hindu family can automatically acquire ownership rights in ancestral property from birth, and a parent/Karta cannot validly sell such property without genuine legal necessity or benefit to the family: a "sale" with no real payment is especially vulnerable to being struck down.