After six rounds of litigation fought by three generations for half-a-century, the Supreme Court has finally decided a land dispute between the state of Andhra Pradesh and one Prameela Modi.
A Bench of Justice AR Lakshmanan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee dismissed the state's claim over the land and ordered that the property given to Modi by the erstwhile Nizam of Hyderabad in 1946 be restored to her.
Andhra Pradesh Government had disputed her ownership over the land measuring three acres and 27 guntas, in Khairatabad village in Hyderabad district of the state.
The Bench said the map produced by the state of Andhra Pradesh was unauthenticated and fabricated in order to get Modi declared a land grabber.
"After such a long time, it is not open to the government to reagitate the same issue, both on the principles of resjudicata and estoppel. The matters, which were concluded by the decisions of the competent statutary authorities, can not be reopened and a citizen cannot be subjected to repeated litigations," the court said dismissing the state's appeal.
"The issue of physical location, raised by the government for the first time before this court by filing a fabricated and unauthenticated sketch which has no basis whatsoever with regard to the location of the land belonging to Modi, is not admissible," the Bench said.
{{/usCountry}}"The issue of physical location, raised by the government for the first time before this court by filing a fabricated and unauthenticated sketch which has no basis whatsoever with regard to the location of the land belonging to Modi, is not admissible," the Bench said.
{{/usCountry}}The court said, "the parties are litigating for the last fifty years and it is high time the parties realised the correct fact situation and closed the case once and for all."
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