Supreme Court orders Mumbai police to return 2 flats occupied since 1940 | Delhi News

MUMBAI: The Supreme Court directed the police department to hand over vacant and peaceful possession of two flats at Opera House, a prime South Mumbai location, to their owners. These flats were taken on rent by the department over 84 years ago for official use.
The SC noted that the flats are not even being used by the police force as an office. Instead, they are occupied by two families of police officers on a “very paltry” rent of Rs 700 a month for the 600 sq ft premises each, which remained unpaid since 2008, the SC noted in an April 8 judgment.
“Injustice, whenever and wherever it takes place, should be struck down as an anathema to the rule of law and the provisions of the Constitution,” the bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan. They directed the department to hand over the flats to the owners, Neha Shroff and another person, “definitely within four months.” Shroff went to the SC last year to challenge an April 2024 order of the Bombay High Court, which dismissed her 2009 petition for orders to recover possession of the two flats at Amar Bhavan, taken on rent in 1940 by the police department.

The SC said the HC should have kept the year 1940 in mind when the “country was fighting hard to seek independence from the British.” “Bombay in the year 1940 was altogether different,” said the SC. At that time, the department may have perhaps persuaded the owners to part with the possession of the two flats for its use. “However, it has been now 84 years that the police department has been in occupation and use of the two flats. Look at the conduct of the department. We are informed that for the past eighteen years even rent has not been paid,” the top court said.
A deputy police commissioner was present before the SC, and the judges interacted with him. The top court passed two orders earlier this year, first in January, asking the parties to resolve the issue amicably, observing that the department could very easily shift to any other place of their choice and allow the owners to use their own property. In March, the SC reiterated that the state cannot retain the premises for “all times to come.” The owners proposed that the department must at least pay the market rent, purchase the flats at market price, or return them. The SC found the proposals to be very reasonable.
With no resolution coming forth from the department, the SC on April 8 set aside the HC judgment and also directed Mumbai police to pay the entire rent accrued to date. The High Court found the possession to be permissive and relegated the owner to file a suit, which would entail a trial on facts that could take years. “To ask the owners to file a suit…would be like adding insult to the injury,” the SC observed, wondering how many years it would take by the time the litigation ends. The HC has to keep in mind such “hard facts” in today’s times.
“The rule of exclusion of writ jurisdiction by availability of an alternative remedy is a rule of discretion and not one of compulsion,” the SC ruled.
What SC said