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Kisan Vithoba Aakhade (D) Th LRs. vs. Suresh Tukaram Nerkar

Not available · 2025 INSC 1092Decided 9 Sept 2025
Not available
Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra · Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Background

The plaintiff sued for declaration of ownership and possession, plus an injunction, over a residential plot and an adjoining open plot, after the defendants allegedly dumped waste and manure on the open portion despite objections. The trial court and first appellate court dismissed the suit, doubting the sale deed's extent (relying on unamended revenue records) and holding that mere presence of waste/manure did not prove the defendants' possession, while also holding the suit barred under Section 34 of the Specific Relief Act for not separately claiming recovery of possession. The High Court, in second appeal, reversed these concurrent findings as "perverse."

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the High Court's reversal. It found that the corrected revenue records (matching the sale deed's stated extent) had been wrongly doubted by the lower courts merely because the correction occurred during the suit's pendency, and that a contesting defendant's unsubstantiated claim of an oral 1971 family partition and "common use" could not defeat the plaintiff's proven title. Witness evidence confirmed that the plaintiff's predecessor, not the defendant, had used and controlled the property, while the defendant merely dumped manure/waste there. Since the plaintiff's possession was thus established, the technical objection under Section 34 of the Specific Relief Act (requiring a separate possession claim) did not apply. The appeal against the High Court's judgment was dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

Courts must weigh actual proven possession and properly corrected official land records over unsupported, uncorroborated claims of informal family arrangements; merely dumping waste on land does not establish legal possession over it.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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