Order 7 Rule 11 CPC | Court Cannot Peek Into Defence While Rejecting Plaint: Delhi High Court

Delhi High Court has allowed an appeal against rejection of a partition suit, holding that a Single Judge committed grave error by drawing adverse inferences from the defendant's evidence at the stage of Order VII Rule 11 of the Code of Civil Procedure — a jurisdiction that permits only examination of the plaint's averments, not a mini-trial on merits.

The Division Bench of Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Renu Bhatnagar delivered the ruling on April 15, 2026, in RFA (OS) No. 30 of 2025, setting aside the impugned judgment dated 02.04.2025 and restoring the suit to its original number.

The core questions before the Division Bench were: whether a court exercising jurisdiction under Order VII Rule 11 CPC can draw adverse inferences from defence pleadings and examine the merits of disputed facts; whether limitation under Article 58 of the Limitation Act, 1963 can be decided summarily without trial where the plaint pleads fraud and lack of knowledge; and whether a subsequent unregistered Will can prevail over an earlier registered Will.

The Division Bench anchored its reasoning in the settled law on the scope of Order VII Rule 11, reaffirming the Supreme Court's authoritative pronouncement in Popat and Kotecha Property v. State Bank of India Staff Assn., (2005) 7 SCC 510. The Court underscored the foundational principle that at this stage, the court must assume all averments in the plaint to be true and cannot embark upon any inquiry into their correctness or otherwise.

The bench was emphatic that the jurisdiction under Order VII Rule 11 is narrowly circumscribed. The law permits examination of whether a real cause of action has been set out, or whether clever drafting has merely created an illusion of one — but it prohibits any compartmentalisation, dissection, or isolation of passages from the plaint. As the Supreme Court had held, "there cannot be any compartmentalization, dissection, segregation and inversions of the language of various paragraphs in the plaint" and the pleading must be read as a whole.

Applying these principles, the Division Bench found that the Single Judge had committed a fatal jurisdictional error. Rather than confining herself to the plaint, the Single Judge had extensively drawn upon the recitals of the 1997 Will — which formed part of the defendant's case — to conclude that it was an "inconceivable situation" for the father to have changed his mind and executed the 2002 Will. "The learned Single Judge committed grave error by arriving at a premature conclusion and drawing adverse inferences based on the Will of 23.05.1997, which were beyond the scope of Order VII Rule 11 of the CPC."

The Court also found the Single Judge's finding that the appellants had not disputed the 1997 Will to be directly contrary to the pleadings. A plain reading of paragraph 32 of the plaint, the bench noted, showed a categorical challenge to the 1997 Will along with a specific plea of ignorance about its execution. "The finding of the learned Single Judge that the appellants did not dispute the Will dated 23.05.1997 is ex facie contrary to the pleadings."

On the question of which Will would prevail, the Division Bench settled the legal position with clarity: validity of the 1997 Will becomes entirely immaterial if the 2002 Will is proved valid, since a subsequent Will, being later in time, supersedes the earlier one. This was a triable question of fact requiring evidence — not a ground for threshold rejection.

On limitation, the Single Judge had held that the cause of action arose in 2003, upon the death of the testator, making the 2022 suit hopelessly time-barred under Article 58 of the Limitation Act. The Division Bench rejected this finding too. The appellants had specifically pleaded that they came to know about the fraudulent Mutation and Conveyance Deed only in November 2021, through a local property dealer, and had no knowledge of the 1997 Will prior to that date. The plaint also set up a continuously accruing cause of action based on the threat of dispossession. "The issue of limitation, in this case, is also a mixed question of facts and law both, particularly in light of the plea of lack of knowledge and allegations of fraud, which require adjudication by the learned Single Judge by permitting the parties to lead evidence, and should not have been summarily decided without trial."

The Court reiterated that where fraud and lack of knowledge are specifically pleaded, the question of when limitation began to run cannot be resolved at the threshold. Such a determination requires a full trial and cannot be answered on the face of the plaint alone. "The aforesaid pleadings raise triable issues which necessarily require adjudication upon evidence being led by the parties and the suit could not have been rejected at the threshold stage of Order VII Rule 11(a) of the CPC."

Accordingly, the Division Bench set aside the impugned judgment and decree dated 02.04.2025, restored the suit to its original number, and directed the parties to appear before the Single Judge (Roster Bench) on 28.04.2026. The Court clarified that no observations made in the order shall affect the merits of the case.

Date of Decision: April 15, 2026