LexStreakRead free →
Supreme Court of India· 12 August 2026

Where properties are alleged to have been acquired using proceeds traceable to shareholding procured by undue influence, does the availability of a subsequent money decree adequately compensate the plaintiff, such that an interlocutory injunction restraining alienation should be refused?

SHRUTI MANAV SHARMA & ANR v. SUNANINA SINGH & ORS
2026 INSC 843
Coram: Alok Aradhe; Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha
🔖 Save this judgment🔔 Follow Order XLIII Rule 1(r) Code of Ci…📬 Get today's judgments
View the original judgment PDFFree to read. To download it — or the LexStreak typeset copy with the headnote and Points of Law — create an account; downloads are part of the Pro plan.
Answer

No. Loss of controlling shareholding in family companies, or the creation of third-party rights in properties acquired with the proceeds of disputed transfers, is an injury that a subsequent decree cannot unwind and is not mere financial loss capable of computation and recovery from a solvent party; properties traceable to and standing in the place of the impugned shareholding and proceeds must, for the present, be preserved along with them pending trial.

Headnote

Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 — Order XLIII Rule 1(r) — Appellate interference with discretionary injunction — Temporary injunction — Trinity test — Prima facie case — Balance of convenience — Irreparable injury — Vice of the mini-trial — Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 — Order XLIII Rule 1(r) — Limited scope of appellate interference — Held: An order on an application for temporary injunction is discretionary, and an appellate court does not undertake a fresh reconsideration of the entire matter or substitute its own view merely because it might have arrived at a different conclusion on the same material; interference is warranted only where the discretion has been exercised arbitrarily, capriciously, perversely, mala fide, upon an irrelevant or extraneous consideration, or contrary to settled legal principles, the guiding test being whether a reasonable person could have reached the same conclusion on the material before the trial court. (¶13, 36, 39) Temporary injunction — Trinity test — Prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable injury — Held further: The grant of a temporary injunction rests on three coexisting conditions: a prima facie case, meaning a substantial question raised bona fide requiring investigation and not a case proved to the hilt; a balance of convenience requiring the court to weigh the injury to the plaintiff against the corresponding injury to the defendant were the uncertainty to be resolved against each; and an irreparable injury which cannot be adequately compensated in damages; where these three conditions coexist, as found by the court of first instance on the material before it, its exercise of discretion cannot be faulted merely because an appellate court would have weighed the same material differently. (¶24, 28, 31, 35) Temporary injunction — Interlocutory stage — Vice of the mini-trial — Held further: The scope of examination on an application for interim injunction, and equally of an appeal against an order made on such an application, is confined to the limited and threshold question whether the plaintiff has shown a serious dispute meriting investigation at trial; it does not extend to an examination of the final effect, probative value or ultimate merits of the documents annexed to the pleadings, and courts must confine such orders to recording, with reasons, their findings on the three settled conditions without embarking upon what is, in substance, a mini-trial upon affidavits and documents that properly await the leading of evidence. (¶37, 38, 40)

In the Court's own words
Paragraph 33This is precisely the injury that is irreparable in the sense in which equity uses that word. Loss of controlling shareholding in family companies, or the creation of third-party rights in properties acquired with the proceeds of disputed transfers, that a subsequent decree cannot unwind, is the paradigm of such injury; it is not mere financial loss capable of computation and recovery from a solvent party, of the kind that courts, following Evans Marshall & Co. Ltd. v. Bertola SA[^14], have held to be adequately met by an award of damages. No decree for money could restore to the appellants the specific shareholding and properties in question, once alienated to third parties during the pendency of the suit.
Paragraph 34The plea that certain properties held by defendant Nos.4 and 9 are self-acquired does not, on the pleadings, alter this conclusion. It is the appellants’ case – accepted, on a prima facie view, by the learned Single Judge that these properties were purchased with the proceeds of loans and advances drawn from the family companies and LLPs and with the sale proceeds of properties transferred by the original plaintiff, without any independent source of income being pleaded by defendant Nos.4 and 9 for their acquisition. Properties so acquired are, for the purposes of interim protection, properties traceable to and standing in the place of the very shareholding and proceeds whose transfer is impugned in the suit, and must, for the present, be preserved along with them. Whether they are in truth self-acquired, and whether the plea of traceability is ultimately made out, are matters for trial and not for this Court, or indeed for the Division Bench, to resolve at the interlocutory stage.
Acts & Sections
Order XLIII Rule 1(r) Code of Civil Procedure, 1908Order XXXIX Rule 1 Code of Civil Procedure, 1908s.94 Code of Civil Procedure, 1908s.151 Code of Civil Procedure, 1908s.36 Specific Relief Act, 1963s.37(1) Specific Relief Act, 1963s.89 Companies Act, 2013s.14 Hindu Succession Act, 1956

One judgment a day. That's the whole habit.

Read the full text of SHRUTI MANAV SHARMA & ANR v. SUNANINA SINGH & ORS — and get the Supreme Court's output as a five-minute daily read, with plain-language headnotes and the questions each judgment settles.

Create my free account

Free forever plan · 30 seconds · data stays in India

Open the full judgment →

Also decided in this judgment
What is the scope of an appellate court's power under Order XLIII Rule 1(r) of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 to interfere with a discretionary order granting or refusing a temporary injunction?What are the three conditions that must coexist for a court to grant a temporary injunction under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908?Can a court, while deciding an application for temporary injunction under Order XXXIX of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, conduct a detailed, merits-based analysis of disputed documents to assess the probable outcome at trial?
Plain-language answer prepared by the LexStreak Editorial Desk — verify against the judgment. Source: Supreme Court of India. Corrections