Himachal HC dates 1986 plaint to 10.15 am by petition-box rule, holds same-day sale deed hit by lis pendens

Justice Rakesh Kainthla dismissed a second appeal pending since 2008 by purchasers who bought part of a Una plot from the vendor on the very day a specific performance suit was filed against her. Reading the High Court Rules on the court petition box, the judge held the plaint was presented by 10.15 am, so both sales were pendente lite, Section 19(b) of the Specific Relief Act gave no shelter, and Order XXI Rule 102 barred the objections.

On 3 June 1986 Jagannath filed a suit in Una for specific performance of an agreement to buy land from Sarwani Devi for ₹4,000. The same day, Sarwani’s attorney Jeeta sold five marlas of that land to Gian Chand for ₹300. Forty years on, the Himachal Pradesh High Court has held that the plaint got there first. In a judgment delivered on 29 October 2026, Justice Rakesh Kainthla used the High Court Rules governing the court petition box to fix the moment of institution at or before 10.15 am, held that both the 1986 sale and a second sale to Pritam Singh in October 1987 were hit by the doctrine of lis pendens, and dismissed the purchasers’ second appeal, RSA No. 461 of 2008, against an order directing the decree to be executed against them.

Two sales, one injunction nobody knew about, and an executing court that split the land

The Senior Sub-Judge, Una, decreed Jagannath’s suit and directed Sarwani Devi to execute a sale deed for ₹4,000. The decree was passed on 3 September 1992. When Jagannath sought execution and asked that Sarwani be made to execute the deed on payment of the balance price, three objectors, Pritam Singh, Gian Singh and Vikram Singh, filed objections under Order XXI Rules 97 and 98 of the Code of Civil Procedure. They pleaded that they were the absolute owners in possession, that Jagannath had nothing to do with the land, and that they had bought the whole of it by sale deeds of 3 June 1986 and 6 October 1986 for value, without notice, before the suit was filed and the decree passed. The decree was not binding on them, they said, and execution could not proceed against them. Jagannath replied that the deeds were executed after the suit was filed, to defeat his rights.

The executing court framed four issues on 15 December 2000. The objectors examined Pritam Singh, Gian Chand, Jeeta and Ram Chand; the decree holder examined Prem Lal, Chanan Singh and Jagannath himself. On 8 March 2002 the executing court found that Jeeta, as attorney of the judgment debtor, had sold land to Pritam on 6 October 1987 and to Gian Chand on 3 June 1986, and had put both in possession. The suit had been filed on 3 June 1986 and an interim injunction restraining alienation was granted the same day, but there was no evidence that the judgment debtors or the objectors knew of it. The court held that the part of the land already sold must be excluded, upheld the objections, and allowed execution to continue only for the remainder after carving out 2 kanals 17 marlas sold to Pritam Singh and 5 marlas sold to Gian Chand.

Jagannath’s legal heirs appealed. On 29 July 2008 the Additional District Judge, Fast Track Court, Una, reversed. The first appellate court recorded that Sarwani had sold the two parcels through her son Jeet Singh, 5 marlas to Gian Chand on 3 June 1986 and 2 kanals 17 marlas to Pritam Singh on 6 October 1987, and held that the plea of bona fide purchaser for value is not available to someone who buys during the pendency of a suit. Lis pendens runs from the presentation of the plaint until the decree is satisfied. Both deeds fell within that window. The executing court’s order was set aside and it was directed to execute the decree according to law.

Three questions admitted in 2008, argued in 2026 with no one on the other side

The objectors’ second appeal was admitted on 12 September 2008 on three substantial questions of law: whether a specific performance decree obtained by respondents 1 to 5 binds a bona fide purchaser for value without notice who was never impleaded; whether Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act applies when there is no proof of whether the sale deed was executed before or after the suit; and whether a bona fide purchaser is protected by Section 19 of the Specific Relief Act, which the lower appellate court was said to have misconstrued. Pritam Singh has since died, and the appeal was pursued by his legal representatives, Santosh Kumari and others.

Mr N.K. Thakur, Senior Advocate, with Mr Divya Raj Singh, argued for the objectors that they were bona fide purchasers for consideration without knowledge of the suit, that the decree holder had never challenged the sale by Sarwani in their favour, so the appellate court could not set it aside, and that the executing court’s well-reasoned order should be restored. He relied on the High Court’s decision in Bhagwati Devi v. Dev Raj alias Hans Raj Sharma, RSA No. 384 of 2005, decided on 24 September 2019. No one appeared for the respondents when the matter was heard, and the judgment was reserved on 13 October 2026.

The petition box, Rule 7, and a plaint timed to the quarter hour

Justice Kainthla took the second question first, because the objectors’ case rested on the claim that nobody could say whether the deeds came before or after the suit. The record said otherwise. Exhibit O-2 was a sale deed executed by Jeeta as Sarwani’s power of attorney in favour of Pritam Singh for ₹2,500 on 6 October 1987. Exhibit O-3 was Jeeta’s deed of 3 June 1986 for 5 marlas in favour of Gian Chand. The decree of the Senior Sub-Judge recorded the date of institution as 3 June 1986. The dates were on the face of the deeds, in the objections themselves, and in the sworn statements of Gian Chand and Jeeta. There was no gap in the evidence to exploit.

The 1987 sale was plainly pendente lite. The 1986 sale needed closer work, because it shared a date with the plaint. The judge turned to the Explanation to Section 52, under which pendency commences from the presentation of the plaint and continues until the decree is satisfied or becomes unenforceable by limitation, and to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Siddamsetty Infra Projects Pvt. Ltd. v. Katta Sujatha Reddy, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3214, that the doctrine of lis pendens “kicks in at the stage of institution”, not when the court issues notice, and applies even to a defective petition lying in the Registry. The question was therefore when, on 3 June 1986, the plaint was presented.

The certified copy of the plaint carried the endorsement Box No. 1 above the date of presentation. That led the judge to Volume 1, Chapter 1, Part C of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Rules and Orders, as applicable to Himachal Pradesh, which govern the reception of plaints and applications. Rule 7 requires the petition box to be placed in the verandah of the court house about an hour before the court sits. It is opened in the presence of the judge about 15 minutes after the court opens, when all petitions in it are initialled by him. It is then replaced and opened again before the court rises for lunch, and a third and final time 15 minutes before the court rises for the day, after which it is not put out again. Box No. 1, therefore, is the first opening, 15 minutes after the court sits, and anything in it was filed within the hour before that. Court hours being 10 am to 4 pm, the judge concluded that “the plaint was instituted on or before 10:15 AM”. The sale deed to Gian Chand was written, executed and registered later that same day. The first appellate court had been right: the deed was executed during the pendency of the suit and was hit by Section 52.

Section 19(b) protects purchasers before the suit, not during it

On the third question, the court held that Section 19(b) of the Specific Relief Act, which exempts a transferee for value who has paid in good faith without notice of the original contract, does not reach a pendente lite purchaser. It relied on the Allahabad High Court’s decision in Ram Peary v. Gauri, AIR 1978 All 318, which held that in a conflict between Section 52 and Section 19(b), the former prevails: the pendente lite conveyance is treated as if it never existed as against the plaintiff seeking specific performance, and the transferee can be in no better position than his vendor, even if he had no notice of the contract or the suit. The judge then set out at length the Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Alka Shrirang Chavan v. Hemchandra Rajaram Bhonsale, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 55, which traced the three conditions for Section 19(b) protection from Ram Niwas v. Bano, (2000) 6 SCC 685, through K.S. Manjunath v. Moorasavirappa, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 2378, and concluded that Section 19(b) operates at a stage before a suit is instituted; once a suit is filed and the property is then transferred, Section 19(b) must give way to Section 52. The provision, the judge held, “cannot apply to a pendente lite purchaser”. The High Court’s own ruling in Raj Singh v. Maharaj Mal, 1996 (2) Civil Court Cases 326 (HP), was to the same effect. The objectors could not claim to be bona fide purchasers for value without notice.

Not being a party is no answer, and Rule 102 shuts the door in execution

The first question was whether a decree can bind purchasers who were never impleaded. The court said it can. In Lakshmanan v. Kamal, 1958 SCC OnLine Ker 132, the Kerala High Court held that there is no need to bring a pendente lite transferee on record because the transfer is void as against the decree holder, who is entitled to ignore it; to insist on impleadment would reward those who wish to escape their obligations and prolong litigation. The Supreme Court in Samarendra Nath Sinha v. Krishna Kumar Nag, AIR 1967 SC 1440, held that a purchaser pendente lite is bound by the result of the litigation because he derives his title from a party who is bound by it. And in Sukhdeo Prasad v. Jamna, ILR (1901) 23 All 60, the Allahabad High Court refused to let a purchaser during the pendency of an appeal put the plaintiff to fresh proof of title, treating the matter as an application of caveat emptor. The objectors’ plea that neither they nor their predecessor were parties, so the decree could not be executed against them, was rejected.

There was a procedural bar as well. The objectors had come under Order XXI Rules 97 and 98, but Rule 102 provides that Rules 98 and 100 do not apply to a person to whom the judgment debtor transferred the property after the institution of the suit. The judge quoted Usha Sinha v. Dina Ram, (2008) 7 SCC 144, where the Supreme Court held that a transferee from a judgment debtor is presumed to know of the proceedings and should be careful before buying litigated property; that Rule 102 reflects Section 52 and refuses a helping hand to such purchasers, since otherwise a decree holder would never realise the fruits of his decree; and, following Silverline Forum (P) Ltd. v. Rajiv Trust, (1998) 3 SCC 723, that once the executing court finds the objector to be a pendente lite transferee its inquiry ends there and he has no right to resist. The same position was reiterated in Tahir V. Isani v. Madan Waman Chodankar, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1962, and in R. Savithri Naidu v. Cotton Corporation of India Ltd., 2026 SCC OnLine SC 198, where the Supreme Court warned that letting pendente lite purchasers raise collateral objections would trap execution in an infinite loop and reduce decrees to paper tigers.

Two further submissions fell with the rest. The argument that specific performance could not have been decreed without first setting aside the objectors’ sale deed was answered by Rajinder Singh v. Sushil Kumar, 2006 SCC OnLine HP 14, where the High Court held that a specific performance decree is executable against a subsequent transferee without any prayer for cancellation of his sale, and by Shingara Singh v. Daljit Singh, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 2823, which treats transactions hit by lis pendens as illegal and denies their beneficiaries the protection of Section 41 of the Transfer of Property Act. As for Bhagwati Devi, the judge distinguished it: that was a specific performance suit in which the plaintiff had not sought a declaration about the invalidity of a decree and was held not entitled to relief, the judgment did not show that the sale there was executed during the pendency of the suit, and Section 19(b) is available only to someone who bought before the suit was instituted. It did not apply.

Order

All three substantial questions of law were answered against the appellants. The court held that the first appellate court was right to find both sale deeds hit by Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act, that Section 19(b) of the Specific Relief Act gave the objectors no protection, and that specific performance could be enforced against them although they were not parties to the suit. RSA No. 461 of 2008 was dismissed. Pending applications were disposed of and the records of the courts below were ordered to be sent down forthwith. The judgment, reserved on 13 October 2026 and delivered on 29 October 2026, is approved for reporting.