5-Gunta Land Dispute: Karnataka HC Orders Both Sides To Maintain Status Quo Pending Suit, Sets Aside Police Protection order

The respondent filed O.S. No. 45/2021 seeking a permanent injunction concerning land measuring five guntas.

The Trial Court granted an interim injunction restraining the petitioners from interfering with the respondent’s possession and enjoyment; the First Appellate Court affirmed that order.

The petitioners claimed rights and possession under an unregistered partition deed dated 11 March 2003 and relied on a separate partition suit, O.S. No. 57/2025.

The petitioners challenged both the injunction orders and a subsequent order directing police protection to implement the injunction.

Whether the interim injunction restraining the petitioners from interfering with the suit property should be modified to preserve the property pending trial, given the parties’ competing claims and the uncertainty about the property’s character.

Whether the order directing police protection to enforce the interim injunction could remain in force after modification of that injunction.

The petitions invoked the High Court’s supervisory jurisdiction under Article 227 of the Constitution, while the underlying interim injunction had been sought under Order 39 Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

The Court applied the interim-preservation principle that, where competing claims and the property’s nature remain to be resolved at trial, maintaining the property’s status quo may prevent alteration and multiplicity of proceedings pending adjudication.

The respondent’s claim rested on the earlier partition decree and related proceedings, while the petitioners asserted rights under a separate, unregistered partition deed and a pending partition suit; the petitioners had not been parties to the earlier suit.

The schedule described the disputed property as land, and the Court considered it prima facie vacant, notwithstanding the parties’ differing descriptions of it as a house site or a road.

In those circumstances, allowing either side to alter the property during the pendency of O.S. No. 45/2021 risked multiplying proceedings, whereas an order maintaining status quo would prejudice neither side.

Once the injunction was modified, the related police-protection order could not survive.

It modified the orders dated 5 June 2023 and 1 April 2024, directing both parties to maintain status quo regarding the suit property until disposal of O.S. No. 45/2021.

It set aside the order dated 12 February 2025 directing police protection and requested the Trial Court to expedite the suit.