A 1989 gazette no one challenged in time: Supreme Court restores Wakf Board injunction over 16 acres

Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran set aside a High Court ruling that had dismissed the Wakf Board suit over Mafi Inam land beside the Qutub Shahi Mosque, and rejected two contempt petitions against the Board.

The Telangana State Wakf Board has won back a permanent injunction over 16 acres and 5 guntas of inam land lying next to the Qutub Shahi Mosque in Hameedullah Nagar, Ranga Reddy District. On 26 October 2026 the Supreme Court set aside a High Court judgment that had thrown out the Board’s suit for want of proof of possession and made the trial court’s injunction absolute. Justice K. Vinod Chandran, writing for himself and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, held that there was no cloud on the Board’s title: a 1968 Survey Commissioner’s report had found the land to be wakf property held for the upkeep of the mosque, a 1989 gazette notification under the Wakf Act, 1954 listed it, and neither the defendants nor the people they bought from had disputed that listing within the one-year period the Act allows. Two contempt petitions the defendants had filed against the Board were dismissed in the same judgment.

A suit decreed, then dismissed on appeal

The Board, then the A.P. State Wakf Board, sued for a permanent injunction restraining the defendants from interfering with its possession of what the pleadings called “Mafi Inam lands”, lying adjacent to the mosque and themselves notified as wakf property. The trial court granted the decree. The High Court set it aside.

The High Court’s reasoning ran like this. Without an occupancy certificate under the Telangana Abolition of Inams Act, 1955, or pahanis or other revenue records, it could not be said that the suit property was wakf property or that the Board was in possession of it. Relying on Balkrishna Dattatraya Galande v. Balkrishna Rambharose Gupta, (2020) 19 SCC 119, it held that an injunction restraining a defendant from interfering with possession cannot be granted unless the plaintiff proves possession. The Survey Commissioner’s report and the gazette notification were 20 years apart, while the defendants held pattadar passbooks for the suit property, obtained by their vendors. The mere appearance of the words Mafi Inam in the pahanis the defendants filed, the High Court said, could not raise a presumption that the land was a service inam granted to a wakf institution. It affirmed the defendants’ possession and dismissed the suit.

Senior counsel K. Parmeshwar appeared for the Board in the Supreme Court. Senior counsel Naveen Pahwa appeared for the respondents, who also relied on Anathula Sudhakar v. P. Buchi Reddy, (2008) 4 SCC 594.

The two precedents and why neither fitted

The Court began with Anathula Sudhakar, which it described as summarising the law on suits for prohibitory injunction over immovable property. Where there is mere interference with a plaintiff’s lawful possession, or a threat of dispossession, a suit for injunction simpliciter is enough. Where a cloud is raised over the plaintiff’s title and he is not in possession, the remedy is a suit for declaration and possession, with or without a consequential injunction. Where title is undisputed but the plaintiff is out of possession, he must sue for possession with a consequential injunction. The Court read this alongside paragraph 14 of that judgment, which it extracted: a declaration is necessary only if the defendant’s denial or challenge raises a cloud on the plaintiff’s title, and a cloud arises when some apparent defect in the title, or some prima facie right of a third party, is made out or shown.

The facts of Anathula Sudhakar explain the rule. Both sides there claimed the same property under two different sale deeds, one from a sister and one from her brother, and the brother stood in the revenue records as owner. The plaintiffs said the brother had orally gifted the land to the sister, but the evidence showed them taking inconsistent positions about how she got it: a gift from the father, a partition, an oral gift from the brother. Such complicated questions, the Supreme Court held in that case, could be examined only in a title suit, not in a suit for injunction simpliciter.

Balkrishna Dattatraya Galande, the case the High Court leaned on, was about a tenant who sued in 2004 for an injunction simpliciter to stop the owner interfering with repairs. The owner said he had filed an eviction suit in 1988, that the tenant had vacated in 1991 under a settlement, and that a purshis withdrawing the suit was filed that year; no rent had been paid since. The trial court found no possession and dismissed the suit, but the first appellate court and the High Court decreed it, inferring possession from the purshis. The Supreme Court faulted that inference. The purshis showed only a withdrawal on technical defects. The Commissioner’s report showed the premises were not fit for carrying on business; the eatery, paan shop and fabrication work the tenant claimed were not found there; he had no corporation licence for any of them; and the three-phase electricity connection a fabrication unit needs was absent.

Neither situation, the Court held, arose here. There was no cloud on title of the kind seen in Anathula Sudhakar, and no live dispute about actual possession of the kind that decided Balkrishna Dattatraya Galande.

What the trial court found: a mosque 200 years old and inam land to maintain it

The Court then went to the trial court’s judgment, which it described as detailed. The Board managed the Qutub Shahi Mosque, together with the Dargah of Shah Amanullah Sahab and an attached graveyard with a well, in Survey No. 89 of Hameedullah Nagar, Shamsabad Mandal. The total extent of the institution across various survey numbers was 37 acres 25 guntas; the suit property claimed by the defendants was 16 acres 5 guntas of it. Exhibit A1, a certified copy of the Survey Commissioner’s report, recorded the mosque, dargah, graveyard and well in an extent of 1.06 acres, with one Haji Syed Maher Ali as muthawalli. Exhibit A2, a copy of the gazette, identified the entire extent as a wakf institution.

The defendants said they had obtained possession through an agreement for sale and a power of attorney. But they admitted the mosque had stood there for a long time. Their witnesses put its age at thousands of years, which the trial court found exaggerated, settling on 200 years. The pahanis the defendants themselves produced, for the years 1956-57 to 1958-59, clearly showed the land as maafi inam property, which the trial court took to mean a service inam entrusted for the maintenance of a wakf institution. The people named in the pattadar passbooks were the defendants’ vendors. The pahanis showing possession in those vendors dated from 1956-57 and 1958-59, and apart from a recital in the agreement of sale there was nothing to prove the defendants’ own possession. Nor was there any proof of the vendors’ title after the Survey Commissioner’s report.

The 1968 survey and the 1989 gazette

The Supreme Court read the 1968 Survey Commissioner’s report for itself. It recorded a survey in which the objection of the grandson of the person entered in the revenue records had been considered and rejected. The dargah on the land was the grave of that objector’s grandfather, and the land had been entrusted to him so that he could continue the service to the mosque and dargah and perform the religious rites of his forefathers. People in possession on that footing had no right to sell. The mosque, dargah and graveyard, with the inam lands in Survey Nos. 57, 59, 60, 81, 87, 88, 89 and 121 measuring 42 acres 3 guntas, were found to be wakf land existing for the maintenance of the wakf. The defendants’ vendors never challenged that order, and in any event their only claim to possession rested on an agreement of sale and a general power of attorney.

The gazette notification of 9 February 1989 followed. The Court extracted serial number 3108 in full. It lists the Qutub Shahi Mosque in Survey No. 89 with the Dargah of Shah Amanullah Saheb and the graveyard with one well, an area of one acre six guntas, its object as prayer, burial and fateha, Haji Syed Meher Ali as mutawalli, a gross income of Rs 200, and attached agricultural wakf properties in Survey Nos. 81, 87, 88, 89, 121, 55, 56, 57, 59 and 60 with a dry extent of 37 acres 25 guntas and a wet extent of 4 acres 8 guntas, along with nine tamarind trees and fourteen mango trees in Survey No. 89.

With that record, the Court said it did not think there was any cloud over title to the suit property. If the defendants’ alleged vendors were ever in possession, it was only because the land had been entrusted to them for the maintenance of the mosque, dargah and graveyard. The survey led to the gazette notification under Section 4 of the Wakf Act, 1954, published under Section 5(2). Disputes about wakfs under Section 6 originally went to the civil court under the 1954 Act and, after the Wakf Act, 1995 came into force, to the Wakf Tribunals once constituted. The limitation for raising such a dispute is one year from publication of the list of wakfs under Section 5(2), a period the courts have read as running from the date of knowledge. No dispute was raised by the vendors or the defendants within a year of the 1989 notification, and no one claimed to have learned of it only later.

Two contempt petitions that went nowhere

While the appeal was pending, the Supreme Court had ordered status quo on 6 February 2024. The respondent filed two contempt petitions alleging breaches. One said religious activities had been conducted on the property and that a gateway and a hoarding had been erected. The other complained that a sale deed had been cancelled without the Court’s prior permission.

The Court did not think either act would have interfered with the nature of the property or affected the rights of the respondent who filed them. In any event, having decided the appeal in the Board’s favour, it held that the respondent had no subsisting interest in the property. It found no reason to entertain the petitions.

Order

The Court set aside the High Court’s order and allowed Civil Appeal No. 2804 of 2024, making the trial court’s injunction absolute. Contempt Petition (C) Nos. 842 and 635 of 2026 were dismissed. Pending applications were rejected. The judgment is marked non-reportable.