Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court has held that a petitioner cannot claim property of their predecessors after remaining silent beyond the limitation period of 12 years and later filing suits and creating an illusion of a fresh cause of action through clever drafting. The court ruled that if a suit filed claiming such property was based on multiple causes of action, the period of limitation would begin to run from the date when the right to sue first accrued.
Justice Alishetty Laxmi Narayana of the High Court was dealing with a revision petition filed by 22nd Century Infrastructures and Projects Pvt. Ltd, a real estate firm, challenging the orders of the trial court at Ibrahimpatnam of Rangareddy district. The trial court had allowed a suit filed by two private persons claiming around 29 acres of land in Maheshwaram mandal on the ground that it belonged to their predecessors and that they got the land by oral hiba (Gift) in 2020.
Mohammed Gouse Ali Khan owned around 273 acres in Maheshwaram mandal. After his death in 1959, the property devolved on his wife, Hameed Khatoon. Later, one Osman Ali Khan purchased 29.25 acres from Hameed Khatoon under a registered sale deed dated July 10, 1967. Osman Ali Khan sold the property to Anugu Raji Reddy in 1971 and other transactions were done.
22nd Century Infra purchased the land on May 10, 2017. The private persons claimed that Hameed Khatoon was their maternal grandmother and she never sold the property. However, they did not have any document and were never in possession of the land. The revenue records did not mention their ancestors’ name since 1973. Based on the oral hiba, they claimed the land and the trial court at Ibrahimpatnam, without going the records, dismissed the interim application filed by the firm. Challenging the interim orders, the firm filed a revision petition before the High Court.
Justice Alishetty Laxmi Narayana faulted the trial court for its failure to advert to the provisions of the Limitation Act, the factual matrix of the case as put forth in the plaint and said it had grossly erred in holding that the suit was filed within the period of limitation.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs had created a mere illusion of cause of action through clever drafting and that the trial court had erred in refusing to reject the suit at the threshold.
It was argued that the mother of the private persons (daughters of the original owner) had not claimed any right or partition either after their father’s death in 1959 or after their mother’s death in 1981, and that the suit, filed after six decades, was clearly time-barred. The High Court found merit in these contentions, observing that the plaintiffs’ pleadings referred only to transactions of 2013, 2014, and 2017, while ignoring earlier crucial transactions of 1967 and 1971.
By challenging only recent sale deeds and not the foundational ones, the plaintiffs had failed to present a comprehensive cause of action. “The plaint has been cleverly drafted to create an illusion of cause of action, which is impermissible in law and must be curtailed at the threshold,” the court remarked.
The court noted that after the death of Hameed Khatoon in 1981, there was no material to show that her daughters’ names were ever recorded in the revenue records or that they possessed the property. Instead, revenue entries from 1973-74 reflected the name of Osman Ali Khan, The plaintiffs neither challenged the mutation entries nor took any steps before the revenue authorities for nearly five decades. Their inaction, the Court said, attracted the doctrine of acquiescence.
Rejecting the plaintiffs’ claim that the property was gifted to them through an oral hiba dated March 20, 2020, the court observed that the essential requirement of delivery of possession under Muhammadan law had not been satisfied. Since the plaintiffs were admittedly not in possession, the Hiba was invalid and conferred no title or interest.
On the question of limitation, the court held that the right to sue first accrued in 1967, when the initial sale deed was executed by Hameed Khatoon. Under Article 113 of the Limitation Act, the limitation period begins when the right to sue first accrues, and successive violations do not generate new causes of action. “The suit, filed in 202i, is beyond the permissible period of limitation counted from the year 1967. Successive transactions do not extend or revive the limitation period,” the Court ruled.
The court criticised the trial court for failing to examine the plaint in light of the Limitation Act and for wrongly treating limitation as a mixed question of fact and law requiring a full trial. Referring to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dahiben v. Arvindbhai Rai Yantji Bhansulai (Gajra), the High Court observed that when the plaint itself discloses that the claim is ex facie barred by limitation, the court must reject it under Order VII Rule 11 CPC without compelling the parties to undergo a full trial.
