Supreme Court Issues Status Quo Notice to Boney Kapoor and His Daughters on Sridevi Estate Property Suit

The Supreme Court has issued notice to Boney Kapoor and daughters Janhvi and Khushi Kapoor on a petition challenging the Madras High Court order that previously rejected a property suit concerning late actor Sridevi's estate near East Coast Road in Chennai.

A bench comprising Justice KV Viswanathan and Justice Arun Pillai ordered a status quo until the next hearing, pulling the high-profile family back into a legal dispute over the 4.7-acre land.

Petitioners MC Sivakami and MC Natarajan approached the apex court after the High Court dismissed their original suit. The claimants are seeking to declare four sale deeds—through which Sridevi and her sister acquired the land—as null and void, alleging the transactions were fraudulent and that they hold a legitimate ancestral share through their paternal grandfather.

Roots of the Dispute

The core of the legal wrangling involves competing claims of legitimacy and property rights dating back decades. Boney Kapoor and his daughters, Janhvi and Khushi Kapoor, successfully moved the Madras High Court earlier after arguing that the plaintiffs suppressed vital facts, including the legality of a marriage contracted during the subsistence of a prior union.

Kapoor's legal team maintained that the plaintiffs lacked locus standi as they were not Class-1 legal heirs of the original titleholder. Furthermore, the defence highlighted that the sale deeds had been executed in 1988, rendering the challenge time-barred after a delay of nearly forty years.

High Court Observations

Justice TV Tamilselvi of the Madras High Court had previously termed the claim vexatious, stating that the litigation amounted to an abuse of the judicial process designed to grab property. The High Court accepted arguments that the claimants had concealed crucial background details regarding family lineage and failed to question the transactions during the lifetime of the original holder.

While the trial court initially held that the disputed facts required a full trial, the High Court reversed that view, ruling that the suit was barred by limitation and tainted by the omission of material facts.