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Prem Mehani & Anr. vs. Harish Batra & Ors. and connected matters

Regular First Appeal · 2026:DHC:7949Decided 17 Sept 2026New Delhi Bench
RFA 277/2019, EX.F.A. 12/2019CNR: DLHC010165552019
Justice Amit Bansal

Background

Members of the Mehani family were embroiled in a long-running dispute over a commercial property in Okhla Industrial Area, Delhi, originally held by a family partnership firm. Some family members sold their interest in the property to third parties (respondents 1 and 2) through an Agreement to Sell, which led to a civil suit and eventually a 2012 consent decree directing sale of the property. Years later, the appellants, who claimed a 25% share in the property under a 2001 family settlement, filed a fresh suit claiming the 2012 consent decree was obtained by fraud, even though they had known about the sale agreement and the earlier lawsuit since 2006 and 2008 respectively but had done nothing about it at the time.

Decision Breakdown

The trial court had rejected the appellants' plaint (the fraud suit) as barred by limitation, and a connected execution appeal (challenging their exclusion from execution proceedings) was also dismissed. The High Court upheld both rulings. It held that the appellants' "real" grievance, their alleged ownership share, had actually arisen back in 2006-2008, and they could not revive a time-barred claim merely by dressing it up as a fresh challenge to the 2012 consent decree. Relying on Supreme Court rulings on Order VII Rule 11 CPC (rejection of plaints), the Court found this was a case of "clever drafting" to sidestep the limitation bar, since the appellants had slept on their rights for years despite full knowledge of the transaction.

Lesson Learnt

If you know about a transaction affecting your property rights, you must act on it within the limitation period: you cannot wait years and then challenge a later court order on the same underlying facts to effectively restart the clock.

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