Restitution of possession cannot be granted under Order 21 Rule 11 without a specific Section 144 CPC application.

The Respondent/Plaintiff filed a suit for eviction and arrears of rent against the Appellant/Defendant regarding a house on Khasra No. 182

The Defendant denied the landlord-tenant relationship, claiming ownership by construction on a nazul plot

Although the Trial Court found no landlord-tenant relationship, it decreed the suit in 1994 based on the Plaintiff's title, a decision affirmed by the First Appellate Court in 1997

In a subsequent Second Appeal (No. 86/98) decided on 07.11.2012, the High Court set aside these decrees, holding that a summary eviction suit cannot be converted into a title suit

During the pendency of these proceedings, possession was delivered to the Plaintiff in 1996, who then sold the property to a third party in 1998

Following the 2012 High Court judgment, the Defendant sought restoration of possession. The Executing Court treated the Defendant's application under Order 21 Rule 11 CPC as one for restitution and issued a possession warrant

The First Appellate Court set aside this order on 08.02.2018, leading to the present appeal

1. Whether an execution application filed under Order 21 Rule 11 CPC can be treated as an application for restitution under Section 144 CPC in the absence of a specific prayer

2. Whether restitution of possession is legally feasible when the property has been transferred to a third party and the superior court’s judgment did not expressly direct restoration

Section 144 of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC), which governs the power of the court to grant restitution to place parties in the position they would have occupied but for a decree that was subsequently varied or reversed

Order 21 Rule 11 of the CPC regarding the procedure for execution of decrees

The principle that in summary eviction proceedings, the court's jurisdiction is limited to the landlord-tenant nexus and cannot extend to adjudicating complex questions of title unless specifically pleaded

The Court reasoned that the Executing Court committed a procedural error by granting restitutionary relief under the guise of an execution application (Order 21 Rule 11 CPC) when the Defendant had failed to file a formal application under Section 144 CPC

It observed that the High Court’s judgment dated 07.11.2012 merely set aside the previous eviction decrees but stopped short of directing the restoration of possession to the Defendant

the Court noted that the property’s status had changed significantly; possession was lawfully transferred to the Plaintiff in 1996 and subsequently sold to a third-party purchaser via a registered sale deed in 1998

Since the third-party purchaser was in lawful occupation and no landlord-tenant relationship existed between the current owner and the Defendant, restoration of possession was deemed legally unfeasible

The Court found the Appellant's allegations regarding the sale deed being "forged" to be unsubstantiated and insufficient to override the recorded transfer of title

The Court held that restitution cannot be granted where no application under Section 144 CPC is filed and where the superior court's decree does not specifically mandate the return of possession, especially after the intervention of third-party rights

The order of the First Appellate Court setting aside the possession warrant was upheld