Madras High Court: police aid can enforce an interim injunction once it has attained finality and is defied by force

In a civil revision petition under Article 227 of the Constitution, the Madras High Court (Justice R. Sakthivel) set aside a trial court's refusal to grant police aid to plaintiffs who had been forcibly dispossessed of suit property despite holding a temporary injunction in their favour. The injunction, granted under Order XXXIX Rules 1 and 2 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 in a suit for permanent injunction, had been confirmed on appeal and then confirmed again by the High Court itself in an earlier civil revision petition, so it had attained finality and could no longer be reagitated by the defendants. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants nonetheless trespassed on the land, harvested the crops, attacked them with weapons and forcibly dispossessed them, in defiance of the injunction.

The trial court had dismissed the plaintiffs' application for police aid on the ground that the defendants claimed to be in actual possession. The High Court held this was erroneous: once an order of injunction attains finality, the party in whose favour it operates is entitled to seek police aid to enforce it against proven defiance by force, since allowing willful disobedience to go unremedied would make a court's order meaningless, existing only on paper. It directed the police to restore the plaintiffs' possession.