A document you always had is not fresh evidence: Delhi HC dismisses a decade-old rent appeal
Upholding arrears, mesne profits and 9 per cent interest, the Court refuses to receive documents on appeal that the appellant never tried to file at trial.
A suit filed in 2007 was decreed in 2015. The first appeal against that decree was decided on 21 September 2026. In U E Trade Corporation (India) Pvt Ltd v. Dr Bhupesh Mangla, Justice Mini Pushkarna of the Delhi High Court found no merit in the appeal and dismissed it, in a judgment running to 116 paragraphs.
What the landlord claimed
The suit was brought by the landlord seeking a cluster of money reliefs against a corporate tenant: Rs 4,74,400 as mesne profits from 1 June 2006 to 24 January 2007; Rs 11,17,039 as arrears of rent from 1 February 2004 to 2 November 2006 at Rs 20,125 a month with interest at 18 per cent; Rs 55,175 as loss of rent from 3 November 2006 to 24 January 2007; and continuing mesne profits at Rs 2,000 a day together with loss of rent at Rs 20,125 a month until peaceful and vacant possession.
The Additional District Judge decreed the suit on 30 October 2015, awarding arrears of rent from June 2005 to 2 November 2006 at Rs 20,125 a month with interest at 9 per cent a year, and damages or mesne profits in graduated slabs — Rs 51,000 a month from 3 November 2006 to 31 December 2006, Rs 80,125 a month for calendar year 2007, and further amounts for the periods that followed.
The interest challenge
A substantial part of the appeal was directed at the rate of interest awarded on the mesne profits and damages.
The Court held that the trial court was well within its power and discretion to award interest at 9 per cent a year, and that the view it took did not appear perverse or illegal. On that standard — not whether a different rate might also have been defensible, but whether the rate chosen was outside the range of judicial discretion — the challenge was not tenable and did not warrant intervention.
The judgment also sets out Section 111 of the Transfer of Property Act, which governs the determination of a lease: by efflux of the time limited by it; where that time is limited conditionally on an event, by the happening of that event; where the lessor’s interest terminates on an event, by its happening; and where the interests of lessee and lessor in the whole of the property vest at the same time in one person, among the other modes the section enumerates.
Documents that came too late
The appellant applied to bring additional documents on record, relying on a notice dated 28 March 2006 which, it said, is cross-referenced in most of the documents already on the trial court record, including a legal notice of 17 April 2006, and whose contents are consistent with that notice.
The Court set out the governing test from Gobind Singh v. Union of India, under which additional evidence may be allowed at the stage of first appeal in three circumstances: where the court that passed the decree refused to admit the evidence; where the party establishes that, despite the exercise of due diligence, the evidence was not within its knowledge or could not be produced; and where the appellate court itself requires the document to pronounce judgment or for some other substantial cause.
None applied. It was not the appellant’s case that the trial court had refused to admit the documents, nor that they were outside its knowledge and could not have been produced below. And the Court held it did not require them in order to decide the appeal.
The point is worth noting because the application had a certain surface appeal: the appellant was not seeking to spring a surprise but to complete a paper trail already referred to in documents on record. The answer is that the test in Order XLI Rule 27 is not about whether a document would be useful. It is about why it is not already there.
Nineteen years from the tenancy to the appeal
The chronology is the quiet fact in this case. The arrears claimed run from February 2004. Possession was in issue by late 2006. The suit was instituted in 2007 and renumbered along the way. Judgment came in October 2015, the appeal was filed in 2016, it was reserved in May 2026 and decided in September.
A landlord who obtained a money decree in 2015 has spent the eleven years since defending it. The graduated slabs in that decree — rising from Rs 51,000 a month to Rs 80,125 and beyond — were the trial court’s attempt to track what the premises were actually worth as the years passed, which is itself an acknowledgment of how long these disputes run.
Order
Finding no merit in the appeal, the Court dismissed it, and the application for bringing additional documents on record was disposed of accordingly. The decree of 30 October 2015 stands.