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Jatin Gupta vs. Poonam Gupta & Ors.

First Appeal from Order (Commercial) · 2026:DHC:8108-DBDecided 21 Sept 2026New Delhi Bench
FAO (COMM) 55/2023CNR: DLHC010071042023
Justice Avneesh Jhingan · Justice Shail Jain

Background

The plaintiffs/landlords sued for possession, rent arrears and mesne profits against a tenant who had signed a registered 2018 lease deed at Rs. 1,50,000 per month for a Rohini property but paid only part of the rent. The tenant denied the landlord-tenant relationship, claiming instead that the property had actually been handed over to a third party (Sh. Raj Kumar) as part of an informal partnership to run a bar, and alleged the lease deed's stamp paper was fraudulently purchased in the name of a co-owner who had already died.

Decision Breakdown

The Commercial Court had directed the tenant to clear the rent arrears under Order XXXIX Rule 10 CPC, and the High Court upheld this. It found a rectification certificate had corrected the stamp-paper name shortly after the original purchase, curing that irregularity, and that the registered lease deed, under which the tenant had himself made substantial payments, clearly established the landlord-tenant relationship. The tenant's separate story about handing the property to a third party for a bar business did not erase his own contractual liability to pay rent to the actual landlords.

Lesson Learnt

A registered lease agreement carries strong evidentiary weight, and a tenant who has acted on it (including by making payments) cannot escape his rent obligation to the landlord merely by pointing to a separate, informal side-arrangement he made with someone else.

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