Karam Singh vs Amarjit Singh & Ors.
Background
Karam Singh and a co-plaintiff sued several relatives seeking a declaration of ownership over ancestral land and challenging a 1977 mutation certificate, contending that a will relied upon by the defendants (over 36 years old at the time) was invalid. The defendants sought rejection of the plaint at the threshold under Order VII Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code, and the Punjab and Haryana High Court accepted this, treating the old age of the will as raising a presumption of genuineness that doomed the plaintiffs' case without a trial. The plaintiffs' application to recall that order was also rejected, leading to these appeals.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred in rejecting the plaint outright based merely on the age of the will, since a will only takes legal effect on the testator's death, and here the will's validity had been continuously disputed in mutation proceedings that were only resolved in 2017, so the presumption of genuineness from age could not be conclusively applied without evidence. Whether the defendants had separately perfected title by adverse possession was a mixed question of fact and law that could only be decided after evidence was led at trial, not at the plaint-rejection stage. The Court set aside the High Court's orders, restored the trial court's order refusing to reject the plaint, and directed the trial to proceed to its logical conclusion, clarifying that its own observations were not an opinion on the merits.
Lesson Learnt
A plaint cannot be thrown out at the preliminary stage simply because a disputed document (like an old will) might carry a legal presumption: genuinely contested questions of fact, such as a will's validity or a claim of adverse possession, must be tested through evidence at trial, not decided on the pleadings alone.