Renugadevi and Others vs Religare Finvest Ltd.

Valmiki J. Mehta, J.—This common judgment is passed in these appeals as the challenge in the appeals is to the almost identical orders passed by the court below by which in the applications of the respondent/lender an order has been passed for repossessing the hypothecated vehicles/machines by a receiver on account of non payment of the loan installments to the respondent. When this appeal came up on the first call, though the counsel for the appellants at that stage ought to have had instructions as to whether the defaulted installments would be paid by the appellants within a particular period of time, yet as the counsel did not have instructions, the matters were passed over. When the matters came up on the second call, counsel for the appellants states that on account of financial difficulty, appellants will only pay one installment when approximately at least seven installments in each of the cases are due. The total amount due for all the cases comes to approximately Rs. 60 crores towards installments to the respondent.

It is trite that money borrowed is not money earned. A borrower does not favour the lender when installments are paid. Surely, appellants in cases like these cases have no law, equity or bona fides in their favour because it cannot be that as many as seven installments will not be paid yet the hypothecated vehicles/machines will not be repossessed and the appellants can keep on using vehicles/machines which they purchased by taking loans and without paying the due loan installments. Even with respect to future installments, I may note that counsel for the appellants states that appellants will only pay alternative installments and not installments every month. This, in my opinion, is clearly unacceptable especially because counsel for the respondent states that the vehicles have been rendered untraceable.

Considering the facts of the present case where the respondent/lender has only the security of the subject Vehicles/machines and when taken with the facts as stated above, no case is made out for interfering with the impugned orders. I may note that though counsel for the appellants states that appellants are ready to participate in the arbitration proceedings, however, I fail to understand how that can in any manner be used for setting aside the impugned orders when we take the factum with respect to defaults committed and no honest inclination shown for repayment of the existing dues as also future dues. In view of the above, appeals are accordingly dismissed, leaving the parties to bear their own costs. Since the appeals are dismissed, all the pending applications are disposed of as such.