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M/S Anvita Auto Tech Works Pvt. Ltd. vs M/S Aroush Motors & Anr.

Not available · 2025 INSC 1202Decided 8 Oct 2025
Not available
Justice Aravind Kumar

Background

Anvita Auto Tech Works (a motorcycle dealership company) was sued by its dealer, Aroush Motors, for recovery of money after a dealership dispute over unsold BS-IV category motorcycles that could not be sold once the government banned that category. Anvita failed to file its Written Statement (defence) within the mandatory 120-day period under the Commercial Courts Act, so the trial court barred it from filing a defence at all and closed its right to cross-examine the plaintiff's witness. The trial court then decreed the suit substantially against Anvita, and the High Court of Karnataka upheld that outcome.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court noted that the 120-day statutory deadline for filing a Written Statement fell squarely within the COVID-19 period (15.03.2020 to 28.02.2022), during which the Supreme Court itself, exercising its constitutional powers, had ordered that limitation periods across all courts stand excluded. The lower courts should have accounted for this exclusion and permitted Anvita to file its defence. Separately, and more fundamentally, the Court held that even a defendant who is barred from filing a Written Statement does not lose the separate right to cross-examine the plaintiff's witnesses: that right survives independently, and denying it (as happened here) was "the final nail in the coffin" of Anvita's right to defend itself. The appeal was allowed, the judgment and decree were set aside, and the case was sent back to the trial court to be decided afresh, with Anvita permitted to file its Written Statement (on payment of Rs. 1 lakh costs) and to cross-examine the plaintiff's witnesses.

Lesson Learnt

Even if a party misses the strict deadline to file a written defence in a commercial lawsuit, they still retain the independent right to cross-examine the other side's witnesses. Courts cannot treat missing one procedural deadline as forfeiting every avenue of defence, especially when COVID-19-related limitation extensions applied to the relevant period.

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

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