In Brief
Sucha Singh filed a suit in 1996 for permanent injunction to prevent dispossession from a property he was purchasing. He later withdrew that suit and filed a new suit in 1999 for specific performance of the agreement. The defendants argued the second suit was barred because he should have claimed specific performance in the first suit. The Supreme Court held the second suit maintainable. Where different reliefs (injunction and specific performance) rest on separate and distinct causes of action, governed by different limitation periods and factual elements, they cannot be joined—so Order 2 Rule 2 CPC does not bar the second suit. The court also held that permission to file a fresh suit may be inferred from the plaintiff's statement at withdrawal and the court's order, even without explicit liberty being mentioned.
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