1 Anand IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION APPEAL FROM ORDER NO.447 OF 2010 WITH CIVIL APPLICATION NO.580 OF 2010 WITH APPEAL FROM ORDER NO.448 OF 2010 WITH CIVIL APPLICATION NO.581 OF 2010 Ishwar Aildas Fatnani & anr. ..Appellants V/s. Mrs.Shalini Nikhil Fatani ..Respondent Mr.D.D.Madan, Senior Counsel with Mr.Rajan Jayakar & Ms.Namrata Jayakar i/b.M/s.Jayakars Advocate, for the Appellants Mr.Prashant Subhedar, Advocate, for the Respondent CORAM : R.C.CHAVAN, J. DATE : 22ND JUNE, 2010 P.C. . These two Appeals are directed against a common Order passed by the learned Judge, City Civil & Sesssion Court, Borivali Division, Dindoshi Court, Mumbai, whereby he allowed the Respondent's Notice of Motion No. 2 807 of 2010 and dismissed the Appellants Notice of Motion No.724 of 2010 in Short Cause Suit No.467 of 2010 before the Court. By consent, the Appeals are taken up for hearing at the stage of admission. 2. Facts which are material for deciding these Appeals are as under :- The Appellants are parents-in-law of the Respondent, the Respondent having married Appellants' Son Nikhil on 23 rd January, 2007. Nikhil left for the United States somewhere in March, 2009 and has not keep in touch with either of the parties. The Respondent was residing with the Appellants in the Appellants house. Since the Respondent s continuance at the Appellants house was causing nuisance and inconvenience to the Appellants, the Appellants filed a suit being Short Cause Civil Suit No.467 of 2010 for injunctive reliefs. In the said suit, they filed Notice of Motion No.724 of 2010 whereby 3 they prayed for an injunction to restrain the Respondent from entering in or remaining in flat Nos.201 & 202, Mangal Meeth, Plot No.15, Off 9 th Road Extension, JVPD Scheme, Mumbai  400 049, and also for a direction to handover to the Respondent belongings of the Respondent lying in the room occupied by her in the suit flat. The Respondent too took out a Notice of Motion bearing No.807 of 2010 whereby she sought a mandatory order directing the Appellants not to obstruct her ingress and egress in the flat Nos.201 & 202 and to open the doors of the premises. She had also sought that Opel Astra car which was being used by her should be restored to her (which relief is not being pressed for the present). 3. The learned Trial Judge refused ad- interim relief to the Appellants after hearing the parties and passed an interim order whereby he restrained the Appellants from disturbing ingress or egress of the 4 Respondent. He also directed the Appellants to handover keys of new locks put by them on the flat Nos.201 & 202. He rejected the Appellants' Notice of Motion. 4. The learned Counsel for the Appellants submitted there was absolutely no authority in the learned Trial Judge to pass an injunction order in favour of the Respondent in a suit which had been filed by the Appellants, since Rule 1, Order XXXIX of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, did not enable the Court to pass such an Order. He submitted that an injunction could have been issued at the instance of the Defendants only under Clause (a) of the said rule when property in dispute in a suit is in a danger being alienated by any party. He submitted that there was no such apprehension expressed by the Respondent and therefore, without filing a suit the Respondent was not entitled to the relief she had claimed. 5 5. The learned Counsel for the Appellants next submitted that the Respondent, on her own admission, had not made out any case of having any right in the property. She had merely stated that it was merely a home where she lived with her husband for sometime in past after her marriage. It could therefore became a shared household within the meaning of the term in Sec.2(s) of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005(hereinafter referred to as Domestic Violence Act) Section 26 of the said Act enables the Courts which are considering the proceedings under the Act to grant relief in respect of a shared household. 6. The learned Counsel for the Respondent submitted that the Respondent, being daughter- in-law, and admittedly, having been using premises was entitled to the injunction granted in her favour. He further submitted 6 that the definition of shared household in Clause (s) of Section 2 of the Domestic Violence Act sufficiently covered the case of the Respondent. Clause(s)of Section 2 reads as under :- 2(s) shared household means a household where the person aggrieved lives or at any stage has lived in a domestic relationship either singly or along with the respondent and includes such a household whether owned or tenanted either jointly by the aggrieved person and the respondent, or owned or tenanted by either of them in respect of which either the aggrieved person or the respondent or both jointly or singly have any right, title, interest or equity and includes such a household which may belong to the joint family of which the respondent is a member, irrespective of whether the respondent or the aggrieved person has any right, title or interest in the shared household. 7. A careful reading of this Clause shows that the Respondent could have claimed the property to be a shared household only if it had been joint family property and the appellants and their son Nikhil were members of such joint family. This question has 7 already been considered by the Supreme Court in S.R.BATRA v. TARUNA BATRA (Katju J.), reported in (2007) 3 Supreme Court Cases 169. Relevant observations are as under :- 24. Learned Counsel for the respondent Smt.Taruna Batra stated that the definition of shared household includes a household where the person aggrieved lives or at any stage had lived in a domestic relationship. He contended that since admittedly the respondent had lived in the property in question in the past, hence the said property is her shared household. 25. We cannot agree with this submission. 26. If the aforesaid submission is accepted, then it will mean that wherever the husband and wife lived together in the past that property becomes a shared household. It is quite possible that the husband and wife may have lived together in dozens of places e.g.with the husband's father, husband's paternal grandparents, his maternal parents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, etc. If the interpretation canvassed by the learned counsel for the respondent is accepted, all these houses of the husband's relatives will be shared households and the wife can well insist in living in all these houses of her husband's relatives merely because she had stayed with her husband for some time in those houses 8 in the past. Such a view would lead to chaos and would be absurd. 29. As regards Section 17(1) of the Act, in our opinion the wife is only entitled to claim a right to residence in a shared household, and a shared household would only mean the house belonging to or taken on rent by the husband, or the house which belongs to the joint family of which the husband is a member. The property in question in the present case neither belongs to Amit Batra nor was it taken on rent by him nor is it a joint family property of which the husband Amit Batra is a member. It is the exclusive property of Appellant 2, mother of Amit Batra. Hence it cannot be called a shared household . 8. The learned Counsel for the Respondent submitted that the Judgment in S.R.BATRA v. TARUNA BATRA in fact supports his client's case. He submitted that in that case, the Court had found that the daughter-in-law was not actually residing in the premises in question, whereas in the present case, it has not been disputed by the Appellants that the Respondent was occupying one of the rooms in the premises. This, in my view, does not make 9 any difference. There is no right shown which would enable Respondent to continue her occupation of a room in the Appellants' flat. In view of this, the learned Trial Judge should not have granted an injunction in favour of the Respondent and should have realised the consequence of such an order which would create further bickings. Therefore, first, the Respondent could not have been granted an injunction in a suit which has been filed by the Appellants, and secondly, the Respondent did not show that she had any right to continue in the premises by the mere fact of her having stayed in the premises with the Appellants' son Nikhil. The impugned Order cannot therefore be sustained. 9. This takes me to the question whether the learned Trial Judge was justified in rejecting the Appellants' prayer in Notice of Motion No.724 of 2007 that the Respondent should be restrained from entering in or using 10 the suit premises. Since the Appellants are the owners of the premises and since they have stated that conduct of their daughter-in-law results in harassment to them, the learned Trial Judge should have seen that an injunction in their favour ought to have been granted to prevent day to day bickenings which would occur if both the parties lived at the same place. In view of this, even this part of the order cannot be sustained. 10. As far as prayer of the Appellants about appointment of the Receiver or Commissioner so that the Respondent's belongings could be returned to her, both the parties could mutually resolve the issue in presence of their lawyers. 11. In view of this, both the Appeals are allowed. The impugned Orders are quashed and set aside. 11 12. In view of disposal of both the Appeals, Civil Applications do not survive and the same are disposed of. (R.C.CHAVAN, J.)