Madras High Court: a 'deemed admission' under the CPC doesn't excuse a plaintiff from proving her own case

Girija sued for a half share in a house site she claimed to have jointly purchased and built with her husband, John Panneerselvam, relying partly on the argument that since he had not specifically denied her plea about the property's market value, that fact stood 'deemed admitted' under Order VIII Rule 5 of the CPC. The trial court held she was only a benami name-lender on the sale deed and dismissed the suit; the husband said he alone had paid for the property, and she appealed.

Dismissing the appeal on 12 October 2026, Justice P. Vadamalai first applied the six-factor test from the Supreme Court's ruling in Valliammal v. Subramaniam for proving a benami transaction, including the source of the purchase money, possession after the purchase, and the parties' conduct, and found the husband had discharged his burden of showing Girija's name was included only as his wife, not as a co-purchaser, a fact she herself admitted in evidence. On the 'deemed admission' argument, the Court held, following the Supreme Court's decision in Thangam v. Navamani Ammal, that a deemed admission arising from a defendant's imperfect denial under Order VIII Rules 3 to 5 of the CPC is not an absolute substitute for proof; under the proviso to Rule 5(1), a court retains discretion to still require a fact to be proved, and a plaintiff cannot rest her entire case on the defendant's pleading lapse rather than her own evidence.