Triloki Nath Singh v. Anirudh Singh (D) Thr. LRs.
Background
A family's ancestral land passed through a gift deed to one heir, Sampatiya, who later sold part of it to the appellant, Triloki Nath Singh, in 1984. Separately, another claimant, Salehari, had been litigating over the same land and eventually reached a compromise with Sampatiya in a second appeal before the High Court in 1994, which gave Salehari half the disputed property. The appellant, who was not a party to that compromise, filed a fresh civil suit claiming the compromise decree was obtained by fraud and should be declared void, since it affected land he claimed to have already purchased.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that Order 23 Rule 3A of the Code of Civil Procedure specifically bars any independent suit to set aside a decree on the ground that the underlying compromise was unlawful: the only remedy is to approach the very court that recorded the compromise. Since the appellant was a stranger to the compromise, he could not use a separate suit to attack its validity; at best he could have sought protection of his own title (derived from Sampatiya) independently, without touching the compromise decree itself. The trial court, first appellate court and High Court had all ruled against him on the merits of his claimed title as well. Finding no error in the concurrent findings against the appellant, the Court dismissed the appeal.
Lesson Learnt
If your property rights trace back to someone who was a party to ongoing court litigation, you are bound by the outcome of that litigation, and you cannot sidestep it by filing a brand-new suit challenging a court-recorded compromise: the law requires that challenge to go back to the same court, not a different one.