{
  "id": 7784684,
  "title": "Actor Sridevi property dispute: Supreme Court orders status quo in Chennai case",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/actor-sridevi-property-dispute-supreme-court-orders-status-quo-in",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-09-16T12:26:06.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Indian Express",
    "slug": "the-indian-express",
    "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/legal-news/sridevi-family-property-dispute-supreme-court-chennai-case-10880815/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The Supreme Court has ordered a status quo in a property dispute involving the late actor Sridevi's family in Chennai. The bench comprising Justices K V Viswanathan and Arun Palli issued a notice to Sridevi's husband, filmmaker Boney Kapoor, and their daughters Janhvi and Khushi Kapoor, challenging an April 20 Madras High Court order. The plaintiffs, M C Sivakami and her brother M C Natarajan, along with their mother Chandrabhanu, had appealed against the Madras High Court's decision. Initially, Sivakami, Natarajan, and their mother had sought to declare void the April 19, 1988, sale deeds through which Sridevi, her sister Sree Latha, and their mother Rajeshwari had purchased the land from M C Nithyananda Mudaliar. The plaintiffs argued that the property belonged to their paternal grandfather, Sambanda Mudaliar, and they were entitled to a 1/5th share through Chandrasekaran Mudaliar, their father. The Chengalpattu court summoned the Kapoors, after which they moved the Madras High Court. The Kapoors contended that Chandrasekaran and Chandrabhanu were only live-in partners and that no court had ever dissolved Chandrasekaran's first marriage in June 1957 to M C Banumathi. Consequently, the plaintiffs were not the legal heirs of Chandrasekaran, and the Kapoors argued that their suit for partition was not permissible under law and lacked a sustainable cause of action. The High Court set aside the trial court order, stating that the plaintiffs were seeking the property with a vexatious claim and abusing the legal process. Furthermore, the High Court pointed out that the plaintiffs had admitted during revenue proceedings that Banumathi, who was alive until 1998, was Chandrasekaran's first wife and did not have any children from that union, yet they had suppressed this information. The High Court also noted that the plaintiffs' certificate as Chandrasekaran's only legal heirs, obtained on June 21, 2005, had already been canceled.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 3,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "Vox",
        "title": "The successful campaign to make a terrifying Supreme Court immigration case disappear",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/the-successful-campaign-to-make-a-terrifying-supreme-court",
        "published": "2026-09-16T10:00:00.000Z"
      },
      {
        "outlet": "Mother Jones",
        "title": "How the Supreme Court Seized Power to Rule Over the Rest of Us",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/16/how-the-supreme-court-seized-power-to-rule-over-the-rest-of-us",
        "published": "2026-09-16T11:30:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}