SC quashes 96-yr-old doctor's plea on property

A 96-year-old doctor's bid to get back his property, let out in 1957 for 58.27 paise per month, suffered a final blow with the Supreme Court dismissing his plea.

The top court declined to restore the 2000-square feet premises back to the doctor in Haryana, even though he claimed that the property, a part of a large plot, was to be used for building a charitable hospital.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and Mohan M Shantanagoudar was not even convinced with his plea that the property given for running a sawmill was further sub-let and was now being used for manufacturing iron grills.

The court rejected the civil appeal filed by Ravi Chand Mangla against the Punjab and Haryana High Court order, which had then affirmed the decision passed by the Rent Controller and the appellate authority.

As the doctor claimed he wanted to use the property for the "laudable" social purpose for building the hospital, the court adjourned the matter for a number of times for the parties to settle among themselves.

Dimple Solania and others, who were in occupation of the property, remained adamant as they declined to take back any compensation for evicting the premises. They claimed they would lose their only source of livelihood.

The court, which then went into merits of the matter, found that plea for default on payment of rent cannot be made at this stage by the landlord, as arrears were paid three years before the filing of eviction petition.

With regard to the plea by the doctor that the premises were used for some other purposes than the ones mentioned in the rental agreement, the bench perused the document to conclude that there was no restriction placed on the tenant to run business only relating to the sawmill.