Mental Healthcare Act is shield, Not Sword to harass parent in pending partition suit
Judgment dated 25.8.2026 of the High Court of Bombay in Appeal No.70 of 2026 in Interim Application No.7713 of 205 of Jitendra Roakh Megh Vs. Gorakh Govind Meth and others
The appellant son of the respondent no.1 filed suit for share in the ancestral property and partition. The appellant filed application under Section 105 of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 for Independent Medical Board for examination of mental condition of his father.
The Division Bench framed in all nine questions for consideration.
Interim Application was nothing but a calculated attempt to deploy the provisions of MHA, 2017 as an instrument of litigation strategy, to secure a decisive advantage over the Respondent No.1 in the pending proceedings.
Section 105 of the MHA, 2017 is intended to operate as a shield for the protection of persons with mental illness and cannot be permitted to be wielded as a sword against them by an adversarial party.
In that view, the Appeal is dismissed with exemplary costs of Rs.5,00,000/- to be paid by the Appellant to the Respondent No.1 for having caused undue harassment to the Respondent No.1 at the belated stage of his life. Realistic costs must be imposed to ensure that wrongdoers are denied any profit or advantage from frivolous litigation (Ramrameshwari Devi v. Nirmala Devi, (2011) 8 SCC 249). We hope that these costs would act as a deterrent for the Appellant in initiating frivolous proceedings and abusing the process of Court.
