High Court imposes Rs 1 lakh costs on petitioner for frivolous litigation

Srinagar, Dec 2: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh imposed Rs 1 lakh costs on a petitioner for repeatedly ‘abusing the legal process’ as it dismissed a petition challenging SARFAESI proceedings against him.

A Division Bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Sanjay Parihar dismissed the petition by Ghulam Hassan Shah, a resident of district Kupwara, whose contention was that his single-storey house had been attached and the same was not the property mortgaged as a secured asset.

However, the court pointed out that Shah had a history of filing multiple petitions to stall recovery proceedings initiated against him after he defaulted on a bank loan.

In November last year, the Court had dismissed Shah’s plea wherein he had challenged the Bank’s action under Section 14 of the SARFAESI Act.

Subsequently, while dismissing a review petition in July this year, the court had imposed Rs 50,000 costs on Shah, which he has not deposited yet.

The Court noted that with the repeated attempts to hoodwink the Court, Shah was now advancing a false narrative by claiming mistaken identity of the secured property. In its response, the Bank clarified before the Court that the asset under attachment was a double-storeyed house, which had been properly mortgaged, and not the structure Shah now referred to as situated at another place.

The Court observed that the petitioner had concealed the fact that he owned two separate houses on the two survey numbers and had deliberately created confusion regarding the secured asset.

While the court held that the petitioner with a view to avoid the repayment of the loan as also to save the secured assets mortgaged with the Bank, has been manipulating the process of law one way or the other, it said: “He was not even deterred when his review petition was dismissed with the costs of Rs. 50,000”.

“He seems to be law unto himself. He decided not to pay the costs and filed another petition in an attempt to hoodwink the Court by concocting a story that the house which is attached by the respondents is not the one mortgaged to the Bank.”

Dismissing the petition with Rs 1,00,000 costs, the court directed that the amount be deposited within two weeks, failing which, the Registry has been asked to prepare a Robkar for further action.