Lakshmi Sreenivasa Cooperative Building Society Ltd. v. Puvvada Rama Rao (Dead) by LRs. & Ors.
Background
A cooperative building society in Vijayawada claimed it had the right to buy roughly 7.86 acres of land under a 1981 sale agreement, which it said traced back to an earlier 1977 agreement originally made with several individual purchasers. The land's owners disputed ever executing this 1981 agreement, and a rival claimant (whose own 1979 agreement was later followed by an actual registered sale deed in his favour) was also in the picture. Both the Trial Court and the Andhra Pradesh High Court had already dismissed the Society's specific-performance suit, finding it failed to prove the 1981 agreement was genuinely executed, so the Society appealed to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that proving a sale agreement for specific performance requires proper evidence of execution, including testimony from the agreement's attesting witnesses: here, the Society relied only on the sole testimony of its own witness and never called the two attestors to the 1981 agreement, nor explained their absence. The Court also upheld the concurrent finding that the Society had failed to prove it was ever put in possession of the land. Since both lower courts' findings were "possible views" supported by the evidence and not manifestly unreasonable, the Supreme Court declined to disturb them. It also rejected a fallback request for a refund of earnest money, since no such relief had been sought in the original suit and granting it would contradict the finding that payment of earnest money itself was never proved; both appeals were dismissed with costs.
Lesson Learnt
In a suit for specific performance of a property sale agreement, simply asserting that an agreement was signed is not enough: the party relying on it must produce the attesting witnesses or otherwise properly prove execution and possession, or the claim will fail entirely, with no automatic fallback right to a refund if that relief was never originally claimed.