Purchaser can’t evict anyone from a property without following law: HC

In a significant ruling, the Bombay High Court recently said that mere acquisition of ownership or title of a property does not entitle a purchaser to forcibly evict the tenant from the property. The HC said that the purchaser must follow the due procedure of law for dispossessing or evicting anyone, who occupies the property which s/he has bought.

The ruling was delivered by a singlejudge bench of Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi while hearing a plea moved by one Kadir Bagwan seeking possession of a residential house, which he purchased in an auction conducted way back in 2010. However, until 2015, the woman, who was in possession of the said house since last 20-years, was evicted by Bagwan with the help of a Recovery Officer as well as the police.

On the other hand, the woman, who had purchased the house initially and was unable to repay the loan, leading to the auction, claimed that she was forcibly evicted from her house and her signatures on the possession receipt were obtained without her consent. Having heard the parties, Justice PhansalkarJoshi ruled, “A mere acquisition of ownership or title over the suit property does not entitle a purchaser to dispossess the person who is in possession of the suit property, without following the due procedure of law, like, filing of a suit based on the title.”

“In this case, neither Bagwan nor the Recovery Officer, has followed the procedure and all of a sudden went to the house of the woman and asked her to vacate the suit property, which is totally against the due process of law. Whether she has raised obstruction or otherwise, and whether she was really in a position to do so, in the presence of the police force, is not a relevant consideration, as it cannot be a mode at all to recover the possession of the purchased premises,” the order reads.

The court was surprised to note the fact that Bagwan had purchased the property in August 2010 and then, all of a sudden in April 2015, he along with the Recovery Officer had gone to the house with police bandobast to take over the possession, without giving the woman, any prior notice.

“In such a situation, relying merely on the possession receipt, which states that the woman handed over the possession voluntarily and without any protest cannot legitimize this process of delivery of possession,” Justice Phansalkar-Joshi said while restoring the possession of the woman and dismissing the Bagwan’s plea.