Two brothers sold the same land. The court had to pick one deed — but couldn't.

He bought 3 acres in 1979. The seller had already sold 2 of those acres to someone else in 1978. When he sued for possession, the seller said both deeds were fake. The court had to pick one — but there was a catch.

Damodhar Narayan Sawale thought he had done everything right. He paid for three acres and twenty guntas of agricultural land in Maharashtra’s Buldana district. He registered the sale deed — a thick, stamped document with a government seal, its edges worn from handling. He took possession. Then he discovered that the seller, Tejrao Bajirao Mhaske, had already sold two acres and twenty guntas of the same plot to another man, Ramakrishna, a year earlier. Damodhar sued for possession of what he had bought. What followed was a legal tangle that took over four decades to untangle — and forced the Supreme Court to answer a deceptively simple question: when two defendants fight each other in a plaintiff’s suit, can the court even hear that fight?

When the seller said both deeds were fake

Tejrao, the seller, did not defend the 1979 sale. Instead, he attacked it. His written statement — a sheaf of papers filed in the trial court, its paragraphs numbered and dry — argued that the registered sale deed in Damodhar’s favour was a sham: a piece of paper used as collateral security for a money-lending transaction, not a real transfer of land. He also invoked the Maharashtra Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolidation of Holdings Act, 1947 (a law that prohibits dividing agricultural land into plots too small to farm viably), arguing that the sale was void because it created a fragment. The first defendant, Ramakrishna, who held the 1978 deed, did not appear to contest the suit.

The trial court accepted both of Tejrao’s arguments. It held that the 1979 sale deed was a nominal document and that the sale violated the Fragmentation Act. Damodhar’s suit was dismissed in 1987.

The first appellate court saw it differently

Damodhar appealed to the Court of Additional District Judge, Buldana. That court reversed the trial court’s decision. It found that Tejrao had failed to prove that the registered sale deed was a sham. A registered document, the appellate court noted, carries a legal presumption of genuineness — the burden of proof rests on the person who claims it is fake. Tejrao had produced no credible evidence to discharge that burden. The appellate court decreed the suit in Damodhar’s favour. It ordered that Damodhar be put in possession of the entire three acres and twenty guntas.

What the High Court did — and why it went wrong

Tejrao then filed a second appeal before the Bombay High Court at Nagpur. In October 2015, a single judge allowed the appeal and restored the trial court’s dismissal. But the High Court did not base its decision on Tejrao’s argument about the sham nature of the deed. Instead, it examined the 1978 sale deed between Tejrao and Ramakrishna — two co-defendants in Damodhar’s suit — and declared that sale void under the Fragmentation Act. From that finding, the High Court concluded that the 1979 sale to Damodhar was also void, because it involved the same land.

The Supreme Court would later call this reasoning “perverse.” The High Court had done something it was not allowed to do: it had adjudicated a dispute between two defendants in a suit filed by a plaintiff who had nothing to do with that dispute.

The legal trap: Order VIII Rule 6A and the counter-claim bar

The Supreme Court bench of Justice M.R. Shah and Justice C.T. Ravikumar, delivering judgment on May 4, 2023, identified the High Court’s first error. Under Order VIII Rule 6A of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (the rule that allows a defendant to file a counter-claim against the plaintiff), a defendant cannot use a plaintiff’s suit to litigate a claim against a co-defendant. The 1978 sale deed was a transaction between Tejrao and Ramakrishna. Damodhar was not a party to it. The validity of that deed was an inter-se dispute — a fight between two defendants — and the High Court had no jurisdiction to decide it in a suit for possession filed by Damodhar.

The court cited its earlier judgment in Jag Mohan Chawla and Anr. v. Dera Radha Swami Satsang & Ors. (1996) to reinforce this principle: a court cannot pronounce a final judgment on an issue that amounts to a counter-claim by one defendant against another, unless that counter-claim has been properly pleaded and treated as a plaint in a cross-suit. As the Supreme Court noted in its reasoning, “an inter-se dispute on the validity of a sale deed executed between defendants cannot be adjudicated in a suit for possession instituted by the plaintiff, as it would amount to adjudication of a right or claim by way of counter-claim by one defendant against a co-defendant, which is impermissible under Order VIII Rule 6A CPC.”

The second trap: Section 36A and the civil court’s limited power

The High Court’s second error was even more fundamental. It had declared the 1978 sale void under the Fragmentation Act without considering Section 36A of that Act (a provision that bars civil courts from deciding questions that the Act assigns to a special authority). The Fragmentation Act creates its own mechanism for determining whether a transfer violates its provisions. Civil courts cannot step into that role. The Supreme Court held that the High Court had no jurisdiction to adjudicate the validity of the sale deed under the Fragmentation Act in the first place.

Section 36B(1) of the same Act (which requires courts to refer such issues to the competent authority under the Act) had been completely ignored. The High Court had, in effect, decided a question it was statutorily barred from deciding.

Why the registered sale deed mattered

The Supreme Court also corrected the High Court’s appreciation of evidence. A registered sale deed, the bench held, carries a legal presumption that it reflects a genuine transaction. Sections 91 and 92 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (the rules that exclude oral evidence when a written document exists) reinforce this: when a document is clear and unambiguous, oral testimony cannot override its terms. Tejrao had admitted executing the 1979 deed. He had not produced any evidence to show it was a sham. The first appellate court had correctly placed the burden on him and found that he failed to discharge it.

The Supreme Court noted that Tejrao had raised “mutually destructive pleas” — simultaneously arguing that the sale never happened (sham transaction) and that the sale was void under the Fragmentation Act (which assumes a sale did happen). A defendant can raise alternative pleas, the court said, but when those pleas contradict each other, they work to his detriment. The High Court had ignored this inconsistency.

What the Supreme Court restored — and why

The Supreme Court allowed Damodhar’s appeal with costs. It set aside the High Court’s judgment and restored the decree of the first appellate court — the Additional District Judge, Buldana — which had ordered possession in Damodhar’s favour. The court made clear that the High Court’s errors were not minor procedural slips. They went to the root of jurisdiction: the High Court had adjudicated a dispute it could not hear, ignored a statutory bar, and misapplied the law of evidence.

THE PLAY: A defendant’s mutually destructive pleas — claiming a sale never happened and that the same sale violated a statute — cannot be used by a court to invalidate a registered deed without first addressing the jurisdictional bar under the Fragmentation Act and the presumption of genuineness that attaches to registration.

The seller’s own contradictions had collapsed his defence. But it took the Supreme Court to remind everyone that a court cannot pick a fight between two defendants just because they happen to be in the same courtroom.