Film producer Boney Kapoor and his actor-daughters Janhvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor have approached the Madras High Court against the refusal of an additional district court in Chengalpattu in rejecting a civil suit filed by certain individuals against 4.7 acres of land purchased by the producer’s late wife and veteran actress A. Sridevi on East Coast Road (ECR) in Chennai in 1988.
Justice T.V. Thamilselvi on Monday (March 16, 2026) decided to take up the Kapoor family’s joint civil revision petition for hearing on March 26, 2026, and stayed till then all further proceedings before the district court. A woman named Chandrabanu and her two children, M.C. Sivakami and M.C. Natarajan, had filed the suit claiming they were entitled to a share in the sprawling property.
However, the Kapoor family contended Ms. Chandrabanu had married M.C. Chandrasekaran, the original owner of the property, during the subsistence of his first marriage and hence, such marriage must be considered void ab initio in view of the law that prohibits bigamy. The petitioner family also accused the three plaintiffs of not having disclosed this fact in a genealogy tree presented in their plaint.
“Such suppression of a vital and legally relevant fact constitutes a deliberate attempt to mislead this court and amounts to fraud, vitiating the very foundation of their claim. The third respondent (Ms. Chandrabanu) was fully aware that her marriage on February 5, 1975, was contracted during the subsistence of his (Chandrasekaran’s) prior and legally valid marriage to M.C. Banumathi,” the Kapoor family claimed.
Claiming to be in possession of the property for the last 38 years, the Kapoor family wondered how a civil suit could be filed in 2025 for cancelling the sale deeds of the year 1988. It said, no dispute whatsoever was raised during the lifetime of Chandrasekaran who died on May 29, 1995. It was also brought to the notice of the court that Ms. Sivakami and Mr. Natarajan had attained majority in 1995 and 1999, respectively.
On the other hand, the plaintiffs told the court the Kapoor family had no legal or moral right to term the first two plaintiffs as illegitimate children or to question the relationship between their parents. They claimed the 1988 sale deeds were patently illegal and accused the Kapoor family of having obtained a ‘patta’ (a revenue record to prove private land ownership) for the property in 2023 through fraudulent means.
Further stating they got to know about the property and the “illegal transactions” regarding it only in 2023, the plaintiffs said, they had rightly decided to file the suit in 2025. After hearing both sides, the additional district court on December 1, 2025, dismissed Kapoor family’s plea to reject the plaint by observing the dispute could be resolved only after a full-fledged trial and hence, the present civil revision petition.
Published - March 16, 2026 05:27 pm IST
