ABDUL AZIZ KHAN BABAR vs SALAHUDDIN KHAN ALIZAI AND OTHERS
This matter arises from a petition for leave to appeal against the dismissal of a revision petition by the Lahore High Court, which upheld the concurrent findings of the lower courts returning the plaint in an administration suit for lack of territorial jurisdiction. The core legal question was whether the petitioner properly invoked the territorial jurisdiction of the courts at Lahore by including a specific property located in Lahore within the estate of the deceased. The Supreme Court held that the petitioner artificially and falsely included the property in question in the estate solely to manufacture territorial jurisdiction at Lahore, as evidenced by admissions in previous pleadings by the petitioner and his wife. The Supreme Court dismissed the petition with costs, reaffirming that litigants who knowingly adopt false stances to manipulate territorial jurisdiction will not be countenanced.
- Whether a plaintiff can include a property in an administration suit solely to create territorial jurisdiction in a particular court?
- Can the courts return a plaint if it is established that territorial jurisdiction was artificially invoked?
ORDER
1. ' NASIM HASAN SHAH, J.-The petitioner claiming 1/3rd share of the Estate of late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan, his father-in-law, through a will filed an administration suit in Lahore. Out of the 29 properties listed in the suit only one property, namely property, bearing No, 16-E-I, Gulberg-III was located at Lahore. The respondents mo ved an application before the trial Court that the Courts at Lahore did not have territorial jurisdiction to entertain the suit because the Property No, 16-E-J, Gulberg-III, Lahore, did not form a part of the Estate of the late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan and had only been mentioned in the list of his properties to create territorial jurisdiction of the Courts at Lahore. In this connection, the defendants/respondents filed copies of the plaint of a suit filed by Mst. Nigar Bibi wife of the petitioner, from which it was clear that the property did not form part of the Estate of the late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan. A written statement filed by the petitioner and his wife in yet another suit filed by Salahuddin, respondent No. 1 herein, was relied upon in order to support the contention that the said property did not form part of the Estate of the late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan.
2. ' The learned Civil Judge, after perusing the reply of the petitioner, passed an order on 16-5-1979 holding that the Courts at Lahore did not have the territorial jurisdiction and directed that the plaint be returned to the petitioner-plaintiff for presentation to the Court of jurisdiction. The petitioner challenged the order in a petition which was dismissed by the learned Additional District Judge, Lahore, on 18-9-1980. He then filed a revision petition before the Lahore High Court at Lahore, which, too, failed and was dismissed with costs on 22-2-1982. Hence this petition for leave to appeal.
3. There is absolutely no ground for interference with the order returning the plaint to be presented to the proper Court, because it was satisfactorily proved that the petitioner had included the property bearing No, 16-E-I, Gulberg-III, Lahore, in the list of the properties allegedly owned by the late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan merely to create territorial jurisdiction in the Courts at Lahore when this property, according to his own averment in another suit and the averment of his wife (the daughter of the late Nawabzada Ghulam Naqshband Khan) in two suits, did not belong to him. The petitioner has stuck to his false stand right upto this Court which cannot but be severely disapproved.
4. ' We would dismiss this petition and as an intervener has appeared, direct the petitioner to bear with costs of these proceedings.