In Brief
A plaintiff sued for specific performance of an agreement to sell dated 1992, filed 25 years later in 2017 after discovering the property had been sold to a third party. The trial court rejected the plaint as time-barred under the CPC. The High Court reversed this order. The Supreme Court held that while limitation is a mixed question of fact and law, it cannot be used to reject a plaint under Order VII Rule 11(d) unless the plaint's own averments show it is barred. Here, since the plaintiff averred he only learned of the refusal in May 2017, whether the suit falls within three years of that notice is a triable question requiring evidence, not a ground for early rejection. Laches alone cannot justify plaint rejection; the trial court must decide limitation on merits after trial. The appeal was dismissed.
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