HC slaps Rs 10L cost on dishonest tenant, initiates contempt

The Delhi High Court has imposed a cost of Rs 10 lakh on a "dishonest" litigant for filing a false case and "scandalising the court", saying "harshest of steps" be initiated against him for gross abuse of the legal process.
Justice Valmiki J Mehta also initiated contempt of court proceedings against the man and his wife following their "outright dishonest defence" and directed that a criminal case be filed against them for filing a false claim.
The order came as the court dismissed an appeal by a tenant against a September 2017 order of a trial court which had granted the possession of a premises to the landlord.

The tenant, represented through advocate Anupam Srivastava, claimed there was no relationship of landlord and tenant between them and he was a prospective purchaser of the property located in south west Delhi.
He alleged that he had signed the lease deed in July 2014, without reading it due to paucity of time.
However, the landlord, represented through advocate Fanish K Jain, claimed that the tenant was habitual in defaulting in payment of rent and when he failed to regularly pay the rent, his tenancy was terminated.

The high court noted that in a criminal complaint filed before a magistrate, the tenant had clearly said he was in possession of the premises as a tenant from 8-9 years and had been paying rent to the landlord regularly.

"A reading of the facts show that the tenant is one such dishonest person to whom this court must be unsparing with respect to decision not only for dismissal of this appeal, but also that harshest of steps be initiated against him for gross abuse of the process of law," Justice Valmiki J Mehta said.
Slapping a cost of Rs 10 lakh on the tenant, the court said out of this, Rs five lakh should be paid to the landlord and rest of the money deposited with the website www.bharatkeveer.gov.in, within six weeks.
It said criminal contempt arose whereever an action of a person resulted in scandalising the court or tends to lower its authority.

The court directed that besides the man, a criminal case be lodged against his wife for filing false claim as she had filed this appeal as an attorney holder.
It said a completely false and dishonest claim was set up by the tenant clearly tending to interfere with the due course of judicial proceedings and to obstruct the administration of justice, which required the landlord to get back possession of his rented premises from a "recalcitrant" tenant.
"As court of law, considering the society that we live in today, there are a flood of cases where each case seeks to out do the other case so far as dishonesty is concerned.

"Dishonest litigants have no qualms in going to the extremes of dishonesty not only to prejudice the opposite side in litigation but also put the system of litigation itself to question only because procedural matters and the system of adjudication on account of pendency of heavy backlog is taking considerable time of courts," it said.