Sridevi property feud: After court battles, Boney, daughters asked to try mediation
Supreme Court asks both parties to maintain status quo, says retired high court judge would be appointed to mediate in case
The Supreme Court has suggested mediation for the family of late actor Sridevi to resolve the long-running dispute over land purchased by her on Chennai’s East Coast Road.
‘Maintain status quo,’ says SC
A bench of Justices KV Viswanathan and Arun Palli issued notices to Sridevi’s producer husband Boney Kapoor and their daughters Janhvi Kapoor and Khushi Kapoor on a petition filed by MC Sivakami and MC Natarajan, and directed both sides to maintain the status quo on the property.
The top court said a retired high court judge would be appointed to mediate in the case. The matter has been posted to December 18.
The order does not decide who owns the land. It only freezes the present position on transfer, construction, and possession while the Kapoor family is asked to respond and while settlement talks are tried.
What is the feud all about?
The fight is over a prime piece of property at Sholinganallur on the ECR side of the city. Court papers and reports place the dimension of the land between 4.7 and 4.77 acres when it was purchased on April 19, 1988 through four sale deeds.
The parcel most often named before the Supreme Court is 2.70 acres at Survey No. 1/1B. The buyers were Sridevi, her mother Rajeshwari and her sister Sree Latha. The seller named in later proceedings is MC Nithyananda Mudaliar, from the family of MC Sambanda Mudaliar.
Sridevi’s family has held and used the land for nearly four decades. After she died in 2018, her husband and daughters sought revenue records and Patta in their names around 2023. The claimants, on the other hand, say they discovered the 1988 sale during mutation.
Also read: Boney Kapoor moves Madras HC over alleged claims on Sridevi’s Chennai property
Sivakami and Natarajan, along with their mother Chandrabhanu, say they are the children and wife of the late MC Chandrasekaran, a son of Sambanda Mudaliar. They claim that Chandrasekaran held a one-fifth share of the property, that his siblings sold the land without his knowledge or lawful authority, and that the 1988 sale deeds should be declared void.
They want partition and revival of the civil suit that the Madras High Court later rejected.
Defence of Kapoor family
The Kapoor family says the purchase was lawful, possession has been open and continuous since 1988, and the 2025 suit is a late attempt to grab valuable coastal land. They argue the claim is barred by limitation, that material facts were suppressed, and that Chandrabhanu’s relationship with Chandrasekaran cannot confer Class-I heirship because his first marriage, to MC Banumathi in 1957, was never dissolved. Banumathi, they say, lived until 1998. A 2005 certificate naming the present claimants as the only legal heirs was later cancelled.
Claimants chided by Madras HC
The case was first heard in the Additional District Court at Chengalpattu, where the claimants sued for a share and for cancellation of the 1988 deeds. Boney, Janhvi and Khushi applied under Order VII Rule 11 of the Civil Procedure Code to have the plaint thrown out at the threshold. The trial court refused, holding that heirship, the validity of the sale and limitation were disputed facts for a full trial and not for a preliminary knockout.
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The Kapoors then moved the Madras High Court. On April 20, 2026, Justice TV Thamilselvi allowed their challenge, set aside the trial court order and rejected the plaint. The high court called the suit annoying and an abuse of process. It held that a challenge to 1988 deeds filed after nearly 40 years was barred by limitation, that it was unbelievable the plaintiffs learnt of the sale only in 2023, that they were not Class-I heirs, and that they had suppressed the first marriage and earlier failed claims on the same property.
In the high court’s words, they had come forward only to grab the property.
Dispute reaches Supreme Court
The claimants then approached the Supreme Court in MC Sivakami and Another Vs Boney Kapoor and Others, SLP (C) No. 23267 of 2026, asking to revive the suit.
Senior advocate Raju Ramachandran appeared for them and argued that the trial court was right not to kill the case on the papers and that the high court had conducted a mini-trial at the rejection stage.
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Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the Kapoors, said the sale deed was from 1988, the plaintiffs had become majors decades ago, the suit of 2025 was hopelessly late, and even a supposed one-fifth share would not travel the way the present plaintiffs claim. The bench did not decide those questions. It issued notice, imposed status quo, and pushed the parties toward mediation.
“We wanted to know if you people were prepared to sit together and sort it out. We will give you a good mediator. Go and come back. We will appoint a retired high court judge,” the court said.
It later recorded that the parties should explore resolving the dispute through mediation and that the status quo would continue until the next date – December 18.