Rahul Choudhary vs Sudhir Hirawat & Ors.

Per: Arun Monga, J.

The appeal in hand assails the order dated 15.06.2026 passed by the learned Commercial Court, Jaipur, in Execution Case No. 08/2025. By that order, the learned Executing Court dismissed the objections of the appellant under Order XXI Rule 58 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (“CPC”), by which he had sought release from attachment of Plot Nos. E-38 and E-39, RIICO Industrial Area, Bassi Extension, Jaipur (the subject property). By the same order, the learned Executing Court also dismissed an objection petition filed under Sections 47 and 151 of CPC by UCO Bank (claiming mortgage), and a connected appeal has also been filed by the bank as well.

First the factual backdrop in brief.

Respondent No. 1 stood guarantor for a loan availed by Respondent No. 2 Company from the State Bank of India, and also mortgaged his own property as security. The company defaulted and its account was declared a non performing asset. Respondent No. 1 discharged the liability by paying a sum of Rs. 3,05,00,000/- to the bank on 21.10.2013, whereupon his own mortgaged property was released. He thereafter sued to recover that amount by way of subrogation, and also sought a permanent injunction. Respondent Nos. 3 and 4 are the directors of Respondent No. 2 Company. They and certain other entities associated with them were arrayed as defendants in that suit, being Civil Suit No. 31/2018.

During the pendency of the suit, fearing alienation of the property by plaintiff, an application for early hearing was moved by defendant/decree holder. On the said application, by order dated 13.11.2019, the learned Trial Court directed Respondent Nos. 2 to 4/ defendants not to alienate the subject property till disposal of the suit. The subject property is Plot Nos. E-38 and E-39, Industrial Area, Bassi Extension, Jaipur.

Notwithstanding the said order, Respondent No. 2, acting through Respondent No. 3, executed a registered sale deed dated 23.12.2020. The said transfer was in favour of M/s R.K. Industries through its proprietor Shri Rakesh Saini.

M/s R.K. Industries thereafter executed a registered sale deed dated 06.07.2023 in favour of the present Appellant. The transfer was for valuable consideration. Respondent Nos. 3 and 4 were the attesting witnesses to that deed. The Appellant claims to have acquired the property under that instrument and to be in possession of it. He was not a party to the original suit.

The suit was decreed on 01.02.2025. Respondent No. 1 was held entitled to recover a sum of Rs. 3,05,00,000/- from Respondent No. 2, the Company, with simple interest at the rate of 9 percent per annum from 21.10.2013 till realisation.

Respondent No. 1 then filed Execution Case No. 08/2025, registered as C.I.S. No. 45/2025. In the course of those proceedings, the subject property was attached under Order XXI Rule 54 CPC by order dated 19.03.2026.

On coming to know of the attachment, the Appellant filed objections under Order XXI Rule 58 CPC on 02.04.2026. He asserted an independent right, title and interest on the strength of the registered sale deed dated 06.07.2023. He pleaded that he was a purchaser for value, that he was in possession, and that he was neither a party to the earlier proceedings nor bound by the decree. He sought adjudication of his claim and an opportunity to lead evidence.

Respondent No. 1 opposed the objections. He relied on the order dated 13.11.2019 and contended that the successive transfers had been made in violation of the restraint. He further contended that the circumstances of those transactions, including the attestation of the sale deed dated 06.07.2023 by Respondent Nos. 3 and 4, showed collusion and knowledge of the earlier order.

UCO Bank also filed an application in the execution proceedings under Sections 47 and 151 CPC. The Bank asserted a prior equitable mortgage and a first charge over the subject property in respect of a loan advanced to one M/s S.R.S.M. Associates. Respondent No. 1 opposed that application on the ground that the loan had been advanced while the restraint order was subsisting.

By order dated 15.06.2026, the learned Commercial Court rejected the objections of the Appellant. The Court observed that the restraint order had been passed in the presence of the concerned parties, that the transfers had taken place despite that order, and that the surrounding circumstances supported the allegation of collusion. It held that the Appellant could not rely merely on absence of actual knowledge and referred to the principle of caveat emptor while dealing with his claim of bona fide purchase.

By the same order, the Court rejected the application of UCO Bank and held that the decree holder would have the first charge over the amount realised from the attached property.

Hence the present appeal.

At this stage, let us first see what weighed on the mind of learned Executing Court to reject the application of the appellant filed under Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC. For better appreciation thereof, English translation of the relevant part of the impugned order dated 15.06.2026 is reproduced as under:-

Assailing the above order passed by the learned executing court, the learned senior counsel would, inter alia, argue as below :-

Order XXI Rule 58(2) of CPC requires the executing Court to determine all questions relating to right, title and interest, and Rule 58(4) invests the resulting order with the force of a decree. The objections were rejected on the reply and oral arguments of the decree holder without a word of evidence being recorded. Since Rule 58(5) preserves the remedy of a separate suit only where a claim is refused entertainment at the threshold under the proviso to sub rule (1), an objector whose claim is entertained and dismissed on merits is left with no other forum. The evidentiary safeguard was therefore all the more essential, and its denial violates natural justice.

Collusion is akin to fraud. It must be specifically pleaded and strictly proved, and cannot be presumed. The finding of the executing court rests on the single circumstance that Respondent Nos. 3 and 4 attested the appellant’s sale deed. An attesting witness attests execution and nothing further. His presence proves neither knowledge of the litigation nor participation in any design.

There is neither any finding nor legal evidence that the appellant had actual notice of the order dated 13.11.2019 before his purchase. The order was reflected in no registered notice of pendency, and even RIICO, the statutory custodian of the leasehold, processed the subsequent instruments without notice of it. The doctrine of caveat emptor cannot require an ordinary purchaser to discover what the custodian of title itself did not discover.

The sale of 23.12.2020 and the appellant’s purchase of 06.07.2023 are distinct transactions, between different parties, for different consideration, separated in time. Knowledge attributable to the first vendor cannot be fastened upon the appellant by a process of imputation.

The decree is a money decree against a company having a separate juristic existence. It declares no title, creates no charge and grants no relief against the appellant. The only question for the executing Court was whether, on the date of attachment, the property belonged to the judgment debtor or had passed to the appellant under a registered chain of title. That question was displaced by inferences drawn from the conduct of persons legally distinct from the judgment debtor. A registered sale deed carries a presumption of validity until set aside.

Learned counsel for the decree holder urged that the appeal deserves dismissal in limine on the ground of suppression. It was submitted that the appellant, while asserting on affidavit that he had never had any contract, liability, partnership or legal association with any party to the decree, was in truth a Director and thereafter the majority shareholder of a defendant company in the very suit, and that this was withheld both from the executing Court and from this Court. On merits, it was submitted that the first transfer was made by a party to the suit in defiance of a subsisting injunction, that everything thereafter carries that infirmity, and that a plea of bona fide purchase is no answer to the principle of lis pendens.

Since both sides placed heavy reliance on various precedents, we deem it appropriate to set out the relevant extracts before turning to our discussion and reasons.

Chander Bhan (dead) through LR Sher Singh v. Mukhtiar Singh and others^{11.(2024) 13 SCC 122}. The following passages relied upon by learned counsel for the decree holder/respondent no.1 are material :-

G.T. Girish v. Y. Subba Raju (dead) by legal representatives and another^{22.(2022) 12 SCC 321}. The learned Senior Counsel for the appellant relied, in particular, upon paragraphs 93 and 94, which read as follows:-

Maya Devi v. Lalta Prasad^{33.(2015) 5 SCC 588}. The learned Senior Counsel for the appellant relied upon the following passages:-

Thomson Press (India) Limited v. Nanak Builders and Investors Private Limited and others^{44.(2013) 5 SCC 397}. The following passages relied upon by the respondent no.1 may be seen:-

S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu (dead) by LRs v. Jagannath (dead) by LRs^{55.(1994) 1 SCC 1}. The following passages relied upon by learned counsel for the respondent no.1 are material:-

In the aforesaid background, we have heard the rival contentions of learned Senior Advocate appearing for the appellant as well as learned counsel representing the judgment-debtor and perused the case file. We shall now proceed to render our opinion qua the same by recording our reasons and discussions in the succeeding part of the instant order.

Stripped to its essentials, the learned Executing Court held that the order dated 13.11.2019 was passed in the presence of counsel and remained in force till 01.02.2025, that the subject property was nevertheless sold on 23.12.2020 by the judgment debtor company through Respondent No. 3 upon false recitals, that a fresh lease deed was procured from RIICO upon an undertaking of Respondent No. 3, that the property was thereafter conveyed to the appellant on a deed attested by Respondent Nos. 3 and 4, that these circumstances established collusion, that the principle of caveat emptor in any event obliged the appellant to satisfy himself before purchase, and that the decree holder had the first charge over the amount to be realised.

Before we analyze the impugned order and the reasons given therein, the material events are tabulated in the following chronology.

Suit No. 31/2018.

26.09.2019 Application by Respondent No. 1 for early hearing, disclosing the apprehension that the subject property was about to be sold and that the defendants intended to leave the country.

13.11.2019 The learned Trial Court, after recording the categorical denial of the defendants that they intended to sell, directed that the subject property shall not be sold to any other person till final decision of the suit. The order was passed in the presence of counsel for both sides. It was never challenged and it operated till 01.02.2025.

23.12.2020 Registered sale deed by Respondent No. 2 Company, through Respondent No. 3, in favour of M/s R.K. Industries through its proprietor Shri Rakesh Saini. The deed recited that no litigation was pending, that no stay was in operation, and that the title of the vendor was clean and marketable.

23.12.2020 Fresh lease deed registered by RIICO in favour of M/s R.K. Industries, on an application supported by an undertaking furnished by Respondent No. 3.

Financial The appellant is inducted as a Director of M/s Sabnani Year: 2022 Textiles Private Limited, a defendant company in the very suit.

06.07.2023 Registered sale deed by M/s R.K. Industries in favour of the appellant, being Annexure R/6 on the record. Respondent Nos. 3 and 4 signed the deed as attesting witnesses.

On or before The appellant acquires 80 per cent of the shareholding of 31.03.2024 the said defendant company, as reflected in the list of shareholders as on 31.03.2024.

01.02.2025 The suit is partly decreed. Respondent No. 1 is held entitled to recover Rs. 3,05,00,000/- from Respondent No. 2 Company with simple interest at 9 per cent per annum from 21.10.2013 till realisation. No declaration of title is made. No charge is created over the subject property.

19.03.2026 The subject property is attached under Order XXI Rule 54 of CPC.

02.04.2026 The appellant files objections under Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC.

13.04.2026 UCO Bank files an application under Sections 47 and 151 of CPC, claiming an equitable mortgage and a first charge.

15.06.2026 The impugned order is passed, dismissing both applications.

In the aforesaid factual background, for clarity of thought, let us first sum up the case of appellant as set up by him. The case of the appellant is that he was not aware of the aforesaid injunction at any point of time. He contends that he is a bona fide purchaser and that his rights stand protected. He submits that in the light of Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC he ought to have been afforded an opportunity to adduce evidence to establish his right and title, which is the course contemplated by law. He further submits that no independent suit is maintainable in view of Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC. The only remedy available to him at this stage is to file an objection petition. Such a petition has to be tried in accordance with law and cannot be rejected summarily, as has been done by the impugned order.

The appellant was not a party to the suit in his personal capacity, though the company in which he is/was Director, was a defendant therein. In that sense, he is not a judgment debtor in person under the decree. The decree grants no relief against him and does not declare his sale deed to be void. These facts are not in dispute, and we proceed on that footing.

On the pleadings and arguments, the following questions arise for our determination :-.

Whether an adjudication under Order XXI Rule 58 CPC invariably requires the recording of oral evidence, and whether the appellant was denied a fair opportunity.

What is the effect of the injunction dated 13.11.2019 and of the principle of lis pendens upon the transfer of 23.12.2020 and upon the appellant’s purchase of 06.07.2023.

Whether the finding of knowledge and collusion is sustainable on the material on record.

What is the effect of the appellant’s suppression of his own position upon his entitlement to relief.

Before proceeding further, let us have a look at the relevant applicable provisions of law. Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC reads as follows.

Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, so far as material, reads as follows.

Adverting to CPC, two features of Rule 58 deserve emphasis here. viz. (i). The enquiry envisaged therein is confined to a single question, namely whether the attached property is liable to attachment in execution of the decree. (ii) The determination thereof is conclusive between the parties, since no separate suit lies once the objection is entertained and decided on merits. With this in mind, we now proceed to address the questions, ibid.

Adjudication under Rule 58 does not invariably require oral evidence.

We agree with the submission of learned Senior counsel that indeed an adjudication under Rule 58 is not a summary or perfunctory exercise. Sub rule (2) casts an obligation to determine all questions of right, title and interest. Sub rule (4) clothes the resulting order with the force of a decree. Sub rule (5) preserves a separate suit only where entertainment is refused at the threshold under the proviso. It thus follows that where, as is the case here, the objection is entertained and dismissed on merits, the objector has no other forum. An executing Court dealing with such an objection must therefore apply its mind fully and carefully, and the observations in Maya Devi (supra), extracted above, are a salutary reminder of what happens when it does not.

However, the obligation to adjudicate fully is not the same as an obligation to record oral evidence in every case. Evidence is a means to an end. It exists to resolve a disputed question of fact. The correct test therefore is, whether there exists any question of fact which is genuinely in dispute and which, if resolved in the objector’s favour, would entitle him to succeed. If such a question exists, evidence must be recorded. If no such question exists, whether because the material facts are admitted, or because they are established by the objector’s own documents, or because the objection must fail in law even on the objector’s own version taken at its highest, then a direction to record evidence would be an empty formality and would serve only to postpone the fruits of a decree already under execution.

Applying the above test, the appellant’s objection rested on two planks and no more. The first is that he purchased under a registered sale deed for valuable consideration and is in possession. The second is that he had no notice of the suit, of the decree, or of the order dated 13.11.2019.

The first plank is not disputed by the decree holder. The execution of the sale deed, its registration, the payment of consideration and the appellant’s possession were not put in issue. No evidence was required to establish what was not denied.

The second plank fails on two independent grounds. In law, want of notice is not an answer to the principle of lis pendens. On facts, the plea is destroyed by the appellant’s own position on the record. More of it is discussed in the subsequent part. Be that as it may, on either footing, a remand for recording of evidence would not alter the result by a hair.

The order dated 13.11.2019 must be read in its context. Its salient features are these. The plaintiff-decree holder had apprehended that the subject property was about to be sold and that the suit would thereby be rendered infructuous. The defendants, through counsel, categorically denied any intention to sell. It was precisely on the faith of that denial that the Court declined an expedited hearing and instead directed that the property shall not be sold to any other person till the suit was finally decided. The order was passed in the presence of counsel for both sides. It was never challenged. It operated until 01.02.2025.

Within about thirteen months of that assurance, the very property was sold. The vendor was the Respondent no.2-judgment debtor company itself, acting through Respondent No. 3, who had given the assurance. The deed recited that no litigation was pending, that no stay was in operation and that the title conveyed was neat, clean and marketable. Each of those three recitals was false, and each was false to the knowledge of the vendor. A fresh lease deed was then procured from RIICO on the strength of an undertaking furnished by the same Respondent No. 3.

Two consequences follow, and they are distinct.

The first is the consequence of breach. An order of injunction would be reduced to a piece of paper if a party could nullify it by the simple expedient of disobeying it and then pleading the resulting transfer as a fait accompli. Court always retains the authority to disregard, as against the party in whose favour the order was made, something which was done in defiance of its order. It can always restore the parties to the position of status quo ante, which they would have occupied but for the breach. This principle is not a matter of discretion or sympathy, but is the Rule of law on which orders of injunction retain their meaning for the purpose of enforcement.

The second is the consequence of pendency. Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, in its terms operates where a right to immovable property is directly and specifically in question in the suit. To be fair, learned Senior Counsel is on firm ground when he says that the suit here was, in form, a suit for recovery of money. However, we do not rest our conclusion on a strained application of Section 52 in its strict sense. In fact, we do not need to. As held in Chander Bhan (supra), extracted above, the principles of lis pendens rest on justice, equity and good conscience, and they apply even where Section 52 is not attracted in its strict sense.

In Chander Bhan (supra), the plaintiff had filed a suit for permanent injunction and had obtained a temporary injunction. Thereafter a release deed and a sale deed were executed. The Hon’ble Supreme Court held that those instruments were without any legal sanctity, that the alienation could not operate to the disadvantage of the plaintiff, and consequently the defence of bona fide purchase for valuable consideration stood rejected. We feel that the facts before us are, if anything, even stronger. Here the subject property was drawn into the lis by an express application, an express denial by the defendants, and an express restraint order confined to that very property and to no other.

Now, we turn to G.T. Girish (supra), on which the appellant himself relied. That decision does not assist him. Shoe is in fact on the other foot. It assists the decree holder.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court held that the sine qua non for the doctrine of lis pendens is that the transfer is made by a person who is a party to the litigation, and that the person who finally succeeds may ask the Court to ignore any transfer made by any party during the pendency of the lis. That requirement is squarely satisfied. The transfer of 23.12.2020 was effected by Respondent No. 2 Company, which was defendant No. 3 in the suit and is the judgment debtor under the decree. Once the property left the hands of a party to the suit burdened with that disability, no person deriving title downstream could stand on a higher footing. A transferee from a transferee pendente lite takes the property with the same infirmity, for the plain reason that the intermediate vendor had no better right to convey than he himself had received.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court also held that the principle of lis pendens is not to be confounded with the aspect of good faith or bona fides, and that the transferee cannot set up the case that he acted bona fide or in good faith.

We may also add here, for completeness and in fairness to the appellant, that, no doubt, a transfer made pendente lite is not per se annulled and is not invalidated. It creates certain rights as between the transferor and the transferee. At the same time, such rights cannot defeat the right of another party which has succeeded in the previously pending lis.

We are also in agreement with learned Senior Counsel on the proposition that collusion partakes the character of fraud. It must be pleaded with particulars and established by cogent material. Suspicion, however grave, is no substitute for proof. We accept that proposition without reservation, and we have tested the material against it with that standard in our mind.

But collusion is seldom capable of direct proof. Persons who combine to defeat an order of Court do not reduce their arrangement to writing and do not summon witnesses to attest it. Collusion in the present case is therefore established, by proof of primary facts and by the inference which those facts compel. The question in any given case is whether the inference is compelled or is merely available.

We therefore begin with the primary facts. Not one of them is denied by the appellant, and every one of them is borne out by documents whose authenticity is unquestioned.

The order of 13.11.2019 was passed in the presence of counsel for the defendants, and was made on the faith of their express denial of any intention to sell. Respondent Nos. 2, 3 and 4 had actual knowledge of it, and that knowledge is not disputed.

The sale deed of 23.12.2020 was executed by the judgment debtor company through Respondent No. 3 and recited, falsely, that no litigation was pending, that no stay was in force and that the title was neat, clean and marketable.

Respondent No. 3 then furnished an undertaking to RIICO, on the strength of which the intermediate purchaser obtained a fresh lease deed registered on 23.12.2020.

Respondent Nos. 3 and 4, being the very persons bound by the injunction, signed as attesting witnesses to the sale deed dated 06.07.2023 in favour of the appellant, being Annexure R/6 on the record.

The appellant was inducted as a Director of M/s Sabnani Textiles Private Limited, a defendant company in the very suit, in the Financial Year 2022, and thereafter acquired 80 per cent of the shareholding of that company, as reflected in the list of shareholders as on 31.03.2024. Both events preceded the decree dated 01.02.2025.

The same counsel appeared for defendant Nos. 1 to 3 throughout the suit.

Adverting to the fact (d), supra, standing alone. Stand taken by appellant is that an attesting witness attests execution and nothing more, and that attestation, by itself, establishes neither knowledge of pending litigation nor participation in any design. Had the finding of collusion rested on fact (d) alone, there may have been some force in the stand taken by the appellant. But it is not so. Let us see how.

In fact, once the fact (e) is placed beside the fact (d), the entire edifice of the appellant’s case collapses.

Let the position be stated plainly. The appellant did not stumble upon this property. He was not a stranger who answered an advertisement, engaged a title searcher, and was let down by an incomplete registry. He was, before ever he took the conveyance, a Director of a company arrayed as a defendant in the very suit in which the restraint order had been passed, and he went on to own four fifths of that company. He was, on the decree holder’s pleaded case recorded in the impugned order, named as early as the application for urgent hearing in 2019 as one of the persons planning the sale of this very property. And when the conveyance was finally executed in his favour, the two individuals who signed at the foot of the deed as attesting witnesses were the very persons who had stood before the Court in 2019, denied any intention to sell, and been restrained from selling.

To suggest, against above background, that the appellant knew nothing of the suit, nothing of the restraint order, and nothing of the litigation in which his company wherein he is a Director, is a party, is a submission that does not merely strain credulity. It insults it. We are asked to believe that a man sat across a table from the erstwhile owners of a property, took their signatures as witnesses to his own purchase of it, and that in the course of that transaction not one word passed between them about the litigation in which he was, through his own company, a defendant. The proposition is not improbable. It is impossible.

Nor is this a case of an inference drawn from silence. The appellant made a positive assertion on oath. He swore that he had never had any contract, liability, partnership or legal association with any of the parties to the decree. That assertion is not merely unproved. It is demonstrably false on the face of the corporate record, and it was false to the appellant’s own knowledge on the day he swore it. A litigant who deposes to a fact which his own company’s statutory filings contradict is not making an innocent error of recollection.

We are constrained to observe that the arguments canvassed on behalf of the appellant are beyond the stretch of our imagination. They are akin to a plea that he was not aware that the earth is round. His case is that he came to know of suit proceedings only when the execution proceedings were initiated to enforce the decree. In that context, the memo of parties in the civil suit, which was decreed in favour of the judgment debtor may be seen. The memo of parties is reproduced below.

Shri Surendra Singh Karnawat, son of Shri S.S. Karnawat.

Smt. Nalini Karnawat, wife of Shri S.S. Karnawat.

M/s Kanishka Platinum Gold and Silver Products Pvt. Ltd., through Man-aging Director.

M/s Sabnani Textiles Private Limited, through Director Shri Surendra Singh Karnawat.

M/s Admiral Trading Company Private Limited, through Director Shri Surendra Singh Karnawat.

M/s Surendra Karnawat HUF, through Karta Shri Surendra Singh Kar-nawat. …. Defendants”

Qua the directorship of Defendant No. 4, who is a co defendant in the suit, it is borne out that a change took place in the financial year 2022, when the appellant therein, namely Rakesh Choudhary, was inducted as a Director of M/s Sabnani Industries (Textiles) Pvt. Ltd. The trial in the suit was still under way then.

Thereafter, as on 31.03.2024, the shareholding of defendant No. 3 stood as under.

From the above it transpires that Rahul Choudhary, the appellant herein, not only held a majority stake of 80 percent in defendant No. 3, but was also a Director before the decree came to be passed against one of the judgment debtors.

Reverting once again to the subsequent sale deed executed in favour of the appellant herein (a Director of defendant No.4, M/s Sabnani Industries (Textiles) Pvt. Ltd), what renders the case even more curious is that the said sale deed, Annexure R/6, on a bare optical perusal, shows the appellant Rahul Choudhary as the vendee or purchaser. And, immediately below his signatures appear the signatures of the witnesses to the sale deed, who are none other than defendant Nos. 1 and 2 in the suit (Respondent Nos. 3 & 4 herein) and now the judgment debtors, against whom the money decree has been passed. By no stretch of imagination can all this be a sheer coincidence. At the cost of repetition, we may reiterate here that it is rather unfathomable that the appellant, at the time of signing the sale deed, would not have interacted with the witnesses, who were the erstwhile owners, and would not have exchanged any information with them. To contend otherwise would amount to a plea of innocence so profound as to deny the existence of gravity.

We are thus unable to countenance the serious concealment indulged in by the appellant, both before the executing Court and before this Court. The appellant failed to disclose that he was a Director of the co defendant company in the civil suit well before the decree was passed. He also failed to disclose that he was fully aware, throughout, of the pendency of the lis. Having consciously withheld these material facts, the appellant cannot now turn around and, with a semblance of innocence, seek to project himself as an unaware or bona fide party. Such an attempt is nothing but an endeavour to deny that which is as clear as daylight.

We are therefore satisfied, and we hence hold, that the successive conveyances of 23.12.2020 and 06.07.2023 were not two arm’s length transactions that happened as part sinister design. They were the two limbs of a single, deliberate and orchestrated exercise, designed and executed by persons acting in concert, whose object was to strip the judgment debtor company of its only substantial asset and to place that asset beyond the reach of a decree that all of them knew was writing on the wall and was forthcoming. The intermediate purchaser was the conduit. The false recitals were the cover. The undertaking to RIICO was the instrument by which the public record was corrupted. And the appellant, far from being the innocent stranger he has held himself out to be, was the intended and ultimate beneficiary of the entire design.

The finding of the learned Executing Court that these transactions were collusive is therefore not merely conjectural, as canvassed by learned Senior counsel for appellant. We say that it is neither speculative nor founded on suspicion. It is the only conclusion that the proved documents permit. We affirm it, and we affirm it in stronger terms than those in which it was expressed by the learned Executing Court.

There remains the matter of the appellant’s conduct before the Courts, and we do not propose to pass it over lightly.

The plea of bona fide purchase for value without notice is, in its origin and in its nature, an equitable plea. A party who invokes it asks the Court to protect him because he acted honestly and in ignorance. He therefore assumes, as the price of the plea, an obligation of complete candour about his own position. He must lay before the Court every fact bearing upon what he knew and when he knew it, whether that fact assists him or destroys him.

The appellant did the opposite. He swore an affidavit denying any association of any kind with any party to the decree, when he was in truth a Director and the majority shareholder of a defendant company in the same suit. He suppressed that fact from the learned Executing Court. He suppressed it again from this Court in the memorandum of appeal, in which nineteen grounds are taken over several pages without a syllable of disclosure on the point. He then invited both Courts to accept, on the strength of that suppression, that he was an innocent stranger. That is not advocacy. It is an attempt to obtain an order by concealment.

The law on the consequence is settled and it is rather stern. As held in S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu (supra), one who comes to Court must come with clean hands, a person whose case is based on falsehood has no right to approach the Court and may be summarily thrown out at any stage of the litigation, and a litigant who withholds a vital document in order to gain advantage over the other side is guilty of playing a fraud upon the Court as well as upon the opposite party.

Equity does not assist a suitor who has deceived the very forum from which he seeks relief. The appellant sought the protection reserved for the honest purchaser while concealing the single fact that would have shown he was not one. Having done so, he forfeited any claim to equitable consideration. Even had every other ground in this appeal been decided in his favour, which it is not, we would have declined relief on this ground alone.

Before we part, the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Maya Devi (supra), was since the sheet anchor of the learned Senior Counsel for the appellant, we may as well set out why it does not govern this case. Maya Devi (supra) is distinguishable. Two features of that are decisive of the distinction as discussed hereafter.

The first is that the objector there had no connection whatsoever with the judgment debtor beyond having purchased the property from his wife. The Hon’ble Supreme Court recorded that she had no reason to harbour any interest in the dispute between the decree holder and the judgment debtor, and that had she attempted to assail the decree it would have been fair to conclude that she had been put up by the judgment debtor. The appellant before us is the precise opposite of that description. He was a Director and thereafter the eighty per cent shareholder of a defendant company in the very suit. He was named in 2019 as a participant in the very plan to sell this property. He is not a third party brought into the lis by a side wind. He is at the centre of it.

The second is that in Maya Devi (supra) the objections had been dismissed in a manner the Hon’ble Supreme Court described as bordering on dereliction of duty, without any consideration of the objector’s case at all. Here the objections were considered against the documents, and those documents were not in dispute. The principles laid down in Maya Devi (supra) are binding upon us and we respectfully follow them. On the facts, they yield no benefit whatever to the appellant.

For the reasons recorded above we hold as follows. The adjudication under Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC did not, on the facts of this case, require the recording of oral evidence, because no disputed question of fact survived which could have altered the result. The transfer dated 23.12.2020 was made by a party to the suit in defiance of a subsisting order of injunction and during the pendency of the lis, and it cannot be set up against the decree holder. The appellant, deriving title through that transfer, stands on no higher footing. The plea of bona fide purchase without notice is no answer to the principle of lis pendens, and in any event the appellant’s professed want of knowledge is false, the successive conveyances being limbs of a single collusive design of which he was the ultimate beneficiary. The appellant has further disentitled himself to relief by suppressing his own position from both Courts. The subject property was therefore liable to attachment in execution of the decree.

The appeal is dismissed. Having regard to the nature of the suppression and to the delay occasioned to a decree holder who has been out of his money since 21.10.2013, the Appellant shall pay costs quantified at Rs. 50,000/- to Respondent No. 1, within four weeks.

We clarify that nothing in this judgment shall be construed as (a) affecting any remedy available to the appellant against his vendor for recovery of consideration or for damages, or (b) precluding UCO Bank, from pursuing such separate proceedings as may be available to it in law. The findings recorded herein are for the purposes of the adjudication under Order XXI Rule 58 of CPC and of the execution proceedings.

The learned Executing Court shall proceed with the execution expeditiously and without being influenced by anything said herein beyond what is necessary to give effect to the judgment and decree under execution.

Pending applications, if any, stand disposed of.