Actus Curiae Neminem Gravabit: Meaning, Sections And Case Laws
Indian courts apply the maxim actus curiae neminem gravabit, which means that an act of the court shall prejudice no one. A court whose own error has cost a litigant time or a remedy must restore that litigant to the position they would have occupied if the error had never been made.
A court’s own error can cost a litigant an entire case. In Jang Singh v. Brijlal, which reached the Supreme Court from a suit for pre-emption, a compromise decree required the plaintiff to deposit Rs 5,951, and the clerk of the court made out the deposit challan for Rs 4,950 instead of Rs 4,951. The plaintiff paid the amount that the challan showed, the shortfall of one rupee came to light only afterwards, and the trial court dismissed his suit upon that ground. The Supreme Court restored the suit, because the deficiency had been produced by the court itself and not by the plaintiff.
The cost of an error of that kind must fall upon someone, and the maxim actus curiae neminem gravabit is the rule by which Indian law decides upon whom it falls. The maxim does not assume that courts are infallible. It provides instead that where a court has erred, the loss arising from the error is to be borne by the court rather than by the litigant who relied upon it, and that the court must place that litigant in the position they would have occupied had the error not occurred. Several Indian statutes express the same obligation in their own terms, and the maxim therefore operates in practice through the law of procedure.
A principle stated in such general terms leaves two questions unanswered. The first concerns the boundary between an act of the court and the litigant’s own default, since a date is often missed through the inadvertence of counsel rather than through any failure of the registry. The second concerns the strength of the principle when it meets a statute, and asks whether a court may rely upon the maxim in order to cross a time limit that the legislature has fixed in express words.
The Supreme Court addressed the second of those questions in 2026, in a case that arose from a tribunal’s own electronic filing system. In Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Mamta Binani, an appeal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 reached the appellate tribunal one day after the outer limit had expired, because the tribunal’s e-filing portal had refused to accept the papers on each of the last two days available for filing. The Court held that the tribunal ought to have invoked the maxim, since a period of limitation runs against a litigant only for so long as the forum remains open and able to receive what is presented to it.
Actus curiae neminem gravabit and what counts as the court’s own act
Actus curiae neminem gravabit is translated as “an act of the court shall prejudice no one”, and the obligation that it creates falls upon the court. Where the court’s own act has caused harm to a litigant, the court must place that litigant in the position they would have occupied had the act not been done. The maxim is a rule of justice and equity rather than a provision of any statute, and neither the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 nor any other Indian enactment sets it out as a numbered section.
A principle that carries no section number must nevertheless be given effect through something, and in Indian practice it is given effect through those provisions which permit a court to reopen what it has already done. Some of these provisions require the restoration of property or money that an order has taken away. Others allow the record to be corrected, exclude a period of time from the computation of limitation, or permit an order to be recalled altogether. Determining which of them applies to a particular error is the practical part of the doctrine, and it is the part that examination answers most frequently omit.
The question upon which the maxim turns is whether a particular delay is attributable to the court or to the litigant, and a short illustration will make that division concrete. Suppose that a decree-holder applies for a certified copy of his decree on the day on which it is pronounced, and that the registry informs him that the copy will be issued within a week. The copy is in fact delivered to him three weeks later. He files his appeal four days after receiving it, by which time thirty-two days have elapsed from the date of the decree.
Upon those facts the appeal is not barred by limitation. Section 12(2) of the Limitation Act, 1963 excludes from the computation both the day on which the judgment was pronounced and the time requisite for obtaining a copy of the decree, with the result that the three weeks occupied in preparing the copy do not count against the appellant at all.
Two difficulties nevertheless appear upon the same record. The first arises from the Explanation to Section 12, which excludes only such time as was taken after the application for a copy had been made, so that a decree-holder who waits a fortnight before applying must bear that fortnight himself. The second arises from the registry’s estimate of a week, which is not itself an exclusion, because the sub-section excludes the time actually requisite for obtaining the copy. Both difficulties rest upon a single division, namely that the court answers for the delay attributable to it and the litigant answers for the delay attributable to him.
Origin of actus curiae neminem gravabit in Rodger’s case
The origin of actus curiae neminem gravabit lies in a duty stated by the Privy Council in Rodger v. Comptoir d’Escompte de Paris, (1871) LR 3 PC 465. The Judicial Committee described that duty as one of the first and highest duties of all the courts, namely to take care that the act of the court does no injury to any of the suitors.
The passage matters chiefly for the definition of “the act of the Court” that follows it. That expression, the Judicial Committee explained, does not mean merely the act of the primary court, or of any intermediate court of appeal, but the act of the court as a whole, from the lowest court which entertains jurisdiction over the matter up to the highest court which finally disposes of the case. It follows that a clerk of the trial court, the registry of an appellate court and an earlier Bench of the Supreme Court are all “the court” for the purposes of the maxim, so that an error committed at any point along that chain may be answered for at the end of it.
Indian courts received the same duty in a suit for pre-emption that turned upon a single rupee. In Jang Singh v. Brijlal, AIR 1966 SC 1631, a compromise decree required the plaintiff to deposit Rs 5,951, less the sum of Rs 1,000 that already lay in court. The clerk of the court made out the challan for Rs 4,950 rather than Rs 4,951, the plaintiff deposited the amount that the challan showed, and his suit was dismissed on account of the shortfall of one rupee.
The Supreme Court set that dismissal aside, holding that there is no higher principle for the guidance of the court than the principle that no act of courts should harm a litigant, and that it is the bounden duty of courts to see that a person who is harmed by a mistake of the court is restored to the position he would have occupied but for that mistake. The Court directed the plaintiff to deposit the remaining rupee within a month, and ordered that the correction should take effect nunc pro tunc, an expression meaning that an act is treated as having been done upon the earlier date on which it ought to have been done rather than upon the date of the order making it. Since the error had been committed by the court, the Court declined to permit the blame for it to be transferred to a litigant who was entitled to rely upon the court and its officers and to act upon their directions.
Where an act of the court ends and the litigant’s default begins
An act of the court, for the purposes of this maxim, extends considerably further than the word “mistake” would suggest. In South Eastern Coalfields Ltd. v. State of M.P., (2003) 8 SCC 648, the Supreme Court held at paragraph 26 that the rule that no one shall suffer by an act of the court is not confined to an erroneous act of the court, and that the expression “act of the Court” embraces within its sweep all such acts as to which the court may form an opinion in any legal proceedings that the court would not have so acted had it been correctly apprised of the facts and the law.
An order that was entirely proper when it was made therefore falls within the maxim if the court made it upon an incomplete picture of the facts or of the law. The same paragraph states the test from the opposite direction as well. The factor attracting the applicability of restitution, the Court held, is not that the act of the court was wrongful or that the court committed a mistake or an error, but whether a party who persuaded the court to pass an order that was ultimately held to be unsustainable has thereby gained an advantage which it would not otherwise have earned, or whether the opposite party has suffered an impoverishment which it would not have suffered but for that order. The enquiry is accordingly directed to the consequences of the order rather than to any fault upon the part of the court.
Persons who were never parties to the proceeding may also claim the benefit of the maxim. In Ram Chandra Choudhary v. Roop Nagar Dugdh Utpadak Sahakari Samiti Ltd., 2026 INSC 347, the Supreme Court set aside judgments of the High Court upon this very principle, because those judgments had been rendered to the prejudice of several District Milk Unions which had never been impleaded in the writ proceedings. The Court treated the failure to implead the affected parties as a substantive defect in the adjudication rather than as a technical irregularity, since the outcome had disturbed vested rights without those unions having been heard at all.
Restitution under actus curiae neminem gravabit once an order is set aside
Restitution is the obligation that a court owes once its own order has been set aside, and it requires the parties to be returned to the position which they occupied before that order was made, so that the party who benefited from it must give up whatever the order had given. The word bears a narrower sense in this context than it bears in the law of unjust enrichment generally. The only thing restored is the specific advantage which the court’s order produced, and nothing beyond it.
Section 144 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 is the provision that directs that restoration, although it is not the origin of the obligation. In South Eastern Coalfields the Supreme Court held that Section 144 is not the fountain source of restitution, but is rather a statutory recognition of a pre-existing rule of justice, equity and fair play. The Court added that even apart from Section 144 a court possesses inherent jurisdiction to order restitution so as to do complete justice between the parties.
Restitution ordered outside the section is ordinarily traced to Kavita Trehan v. Balsara Hygiene Products Ltd., in which the Supreme Court held in 1994 that the restitutionary jurisdiction rests upon inherent power and is not exhausted by Section 144. That inherent power is subject to a limitation which is as important as its existence, since it supplements the Code and cannot be exercised in a manner contrary to any express provision of the Code. The doctrine of restitution is wider than the maxim considered here, and the two coincide at the point at which the loss complained of was produced by an order of the court.
The restoration Section 144 CPC directs
Section 144 directs restoration in two situations, both of which its opening words identify: a decree or order that has been “varied or reversed in any appeal, revision or other proceeding”, and a decree or order that has been “set aside or modified in any suit instituted for the purpose”. The court which passed the decree then acts upon the application of a party entitled to any benefit by way of restitution. The duty that the section imposes upon that court is to “cause such restitution to be made as will, so far as may be, place the parties in the position which they would have occupied but for such decree or order”.
Two phrases in that formula carry most of its content. The words “so far as may be” concede that exact restoration is sometimes impossible, and it is for that reason that the section goes on to permit orders for the refund of costs and for the payment of interest, damages, compensation and mesne profits. Those consequential orders are themselves confined by the requirement that they be “properly consequential on such variation, reversal, setting aside or modification”, so that a party may not use an application for restitution in order to recover a loss which the order did not cause.
The Explanation determines the court to which the application must be made, and in the ordinary case that court is the court of first instance. Where the decree was varied or reversed in appeal or in revision, the expression “the court which passed the decree” means the court of first instance. Where the decree was set aside in a separate suit, the expression still means the original court of first instance. If that court has ceased to exist or has ceased to have jurisdiction, the application lies to the court which, at the time of the application, has jurisdiction to try the suit in which the decree was passed.
Sub-section (2) closes the alternative route, providing that no suit shall be instituted for the purpose of obtaining any restitution or other relief which could be obtained by application under sub-section (1). A litigant who could have applied under that sub-section, and who institutes a suit instead, is met by that bar. Restitution is therefore claimed by an application made in the suit itself, and where it is sought in respect of a decree that has already been executed it is claimed at the execution stage, which is one of the stages of a civil suit at which the maxim does most of its practical work.
Interim orders a party gained from before losing
An interim order from which a party has benefited before losing the case falls squarely within the restitutionary obligation. In Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, (2011) 8 SCC 161, the Supreme Court held that the maxim operates upon the principle of restitution by relegating the parties to the same position which prevailed before the order causing the prejudice was passed. If restitution were excluded in the case of interim orders, the Court reasoned, a litigant would stand to gain by swallowing the benefits of an interim order even though the battle has been lost at the end. Upon the facts before it the Court directed the payment of about Rs 37.385 crore together with compound interest at 12 per cent per annum from November 1997.
A Constitution Bench approached the same concern from the opposite direction in February 2024. The question in High Court Bar Association, Allahabad v. State of Uttar Pradesh was not what a party gains from an interim order, but what a litigant loses when such an order lapses through no fault of his own. The five-judge Bench held at paragraph 16 that if an interim order is automatically vacated without any fault upon the part of the litigant, and only because the High Court cannot hear the main case, the maxim will apply. Restitution therefore answers the party who has retained a benefit to which he was not entitled, while paragraph 16 answers the party who has lost a protection which he had done nothing to forfeit.
Correcting the court’s own record under the CPC
A civil court may correct its own record at any time where the defect is clerical or arithmetical or consists of an accidental slip, and it may recall an order which it had no jurisdiction to pass. Neither power permits it to reopen a question which it has already decided. Correction of a record and review of a decision are distinct powers under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, and they are conferred by distinct provisions.
The distinction between them lies in what the court is said to have got wrong. A correction proceeds upon the footing that the court decided the matter correctly and that the record fails to say so, and for that reason it requires no grounds and is subject to no period of limitation. A review proceeds upon the footing that the decision itself is defective, and for that reason it is confined to three grounds and is governed by a period of limitation. Confusing the two produces the common error of supposing that the maxim licenses a rehearing wherever a court has erred, which it does not.
Accidental slips corrected under Sections 152 and 153
Section 152 permits a court to correct “clerical or arithmetical mistakes in judgments, decrees or orders or errors arising therein from any accidental slip or omission”, and it may do so “at any time” and “either of its own motion or on the application of any of the parties”. Three features of that language deserve to be separated out. The section prescribes no period of limitation, it requires no application from any party, and the error must have been accidental, which excludes a conclusion at which the court arrived deliberately and which it now regrets. The section asks nothing about the diligence of the litigant, because the mistake with which it deals belongs to the record and not to the party.
Section 153 confers a wider power of amendment, permitting a court “at any time, and on such terms as to costs or otherwise as it may think fit” to “amend any defect or error in any proceeding in a suit”, and requiring that all necessary amendments be made “for the purpose of determining the real question or issue raised by or depending on such proceeding”. Section 152 reaches the judgment, the decree or the order, whereas Section 153 reaches the proceeding, an expression which takes in the pleadings, the applications and the several steps taken in the suit. The closing words of Section 153 operate as a control upon the power, since an amendment must serve the determination of the real question in issue and may not introduce a new one.
Two further provisions supply a remedy where the court itself has mis-stated a step that a party was required to take. Section 148 permits a court to enlarge a period which it had fixed for the doing of an act prescribed or allowed by the Code, in its discretion and from time to time, “not exceeding thirty days in total”, and it may do so even though the period originally fixed has already expired. Section 149 permits a court to allow an unpaid or partly paid court fee to be made good “at any stage”, and provides that upon such payment the document shall have “the same force and effect as if such fee had been paid in the first instance”. A litigant who tendered precisely what an officer of the court told him to tender is therefore seeking the exercise of one of these two powers, and is not seeking a review.
Orders a court may recall for want of jurisdiction
An order which a court had no jurisdiction to pass may be recalled by that court, and the power to recall it is derived from Section 151 rather than from the provisions governing review. Section 151 saves the inherent power of a court “to make such orders as may be necessary for the ends of justice, or to prevent abuse of the process of the Court”, and it does so by providing that nothing in the Code shall be deemed to limit or otherwise affect that power. It is this saving that enables the maxim to operate in situations for which the Code makes no express provision.
Review, by contrast, is confined within narrow limits. Section 114 confers the power, and Order XLVII Rule 1 restricts it to three grounds: the discovery of new and important matter or evidence which, after the exercise of due diligence, was not within the applicant’s knowledge or could not be produced by him earlier, a mistake or error apparent on the face of the record, and any other sufficient reason. A litigant who merely disagrees with the decision can bring himself within none of those three grounds, and the maxim does not supply a fourth.
The reach of the power to recall is seen most clearly where the court whose order is in question is the Supreme Court itself, as it was in A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak, (1988) 2 SCC 602. A Bench of that Court had directed in 1984 that a prosecution be withdrawn from the Special Judge and tried by a sitting judge of the High Court. Four years later a Bench of seven judges held that the direction had been made without jurisdiction and had deprived the accused of an appellate remedy, contrary to Articles 14 and 21, and it accordingly withdrew the direction. The majority applied this maxim in order to cure an irregularity created by the Court’s own earlier directions, and it is for that reason that A.R. Antulay is cited upon this doctrine as often as it is cited upon the law of transfer.
Tribunals correct their own procedural errors upon the same reasoning, although the authority usually cited for that proposition is regularly misattributed to this maxim. Grindlays Bank Ltd. v. Central Government Industrial Tribunal, decided in December 1980, does not use the phrase actus curiae neminem gravabit at any point, and the phrase that it uses instead is ex debito justitiae. The expression “review”, the Court observed, is used in two distinct senses: a procedural review, which is either inherent or implied in a court or tribunal to set aside a palpably erroneous order passed under a misapprehension by it, and a review on merits, where the error sought to be corrected is one of law apparent on the face of the record. A procedural error, the Court held, must be corrected ex debito justitiae in order to prevent the abuse of the tribunal’s process, and a power of that kind inheres in every court and tribunal.
Limitation when the court’s own machinery was shut
Time consumed by a court or by its registry does not run against the litigant, and the Limitation Act, 1963 says so in express words in three separate places, so that no maxim need be invoked at all. These exclusions operate mechanically, upon the arithmetic of the computation rather than upon the discretion of the court. A litigant who relies upon them is accordingly not asking for an indulgence but asserting an entitlement.
Three years of authority have examined the same division from different angles. In February 2024 the Constitution Bench in High Court Bar Association, Allahabad held that an interim order cannot be made to lapse by the mere passage of time under Article 142, and that the maxim applies where a litigant loses the protection of such an order only because the High Court was unable to reach the main case. In August 2025 the Supreme Court held in Ashdan Properties that the further fifteen days permitted by the proviso to Section 61(2) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 constitute an outer boundary. In September 2026 it held in Mamta Binani that an appellate tribunal whose own filing portal had refused the papers ought to have invoked the maxim.
Those three decisions are not in conflict with one another, although they are easily read as though they were. Each of them turns upon a different question: the first upon whether a court may cause its own order to expire, the second upon how far a statutory power of condonation extends, and the third upon when a period of limitation begins to run at all. Distinguishing the three questions from one another is what makes the sequence usable in a written answer.
Time the court consumed, excluded by Sections 4, 12 and 14
Section 4 excludes a day upon which the court is closed, providing that where the prescribed period for any suit, appeal or application expires on a day when the court is closed, the filing may be made on the day when the court reopens. Its Explanation defines closure generously, since a court is deemed to be closed on any day if, during any part of its normal working hours, it remains closed on that day. Section 10 of the General Clauses Act, 1897 lays down a similar rule for an act required to be done in a court or office under a Central Act, and a proviso excludes from its operation anything governed by the Limitation Act, with the result that the two provisions do not compete with one another.
Section 12 excludes the time which the court itself took to produce the papers that an appeal requires. In computing the period for an appeal, for an application for leave to appeal, for a revision or for a review, sub-section (2) excludes the day upon which the judgment complained of was pronounced together with the time requisite for obtaining a copy of the decree, sentence or order. The Explanation then operates in the opposite direction, providing that any time taken by the court to prepare the decree or order before an application for a copy is made shall not be excluded. A litigant who delays his application for a copy must therefore bear that delay himself, however long the court may afterwards take to supply the copy.
Section 14 excludes time spent in the wrong forum rather than time spent waiting upon the right one. Where a plaintiff has been prosecuting another civil proceeding with due diligence, upon the same matter in issue and against the same defendant, and that court was unable to entertain the proceeding “from defect of jurisdiction or other cause of a like nature”, the period so spent is excluded, and sub-section (2) applies the same exclusion to an application. The conditions of the section are carried by the words “due diligence” and “in good faith”, so that a litigant who chose the wrong forum carelessly falls outside it.
Section 5 differs in kind from the three provisions just considered, because it confers a discretion rather than an exclusion. It permits an appeal or an application to be admitted after the prescribed period where the appellant or the applicant satisfies the court that he had sufficient cause for not preferring it within that period, and delay occasioned by the court’s own office is a familiar instance of sufficient cause. A litigant therefore relies upon Sections 4, 12 and 14 where the arithmetic of the computation saves him, and upon Section 5 where it does not. The maxim strengthens a plea under Section 5 without being the source of the power to allow it.
Outer limits a tribunal cannot cross on sufficient cause
A tribunal cannot cross an outer limit which its own statute has fixed, however good the cause shown may be, and the clearest Indian illustration is the appeal provision in the insolvency legislation. The proviso to Section 61(2) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 permits the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to allow an appeal to be filed after the period of thirty days “if it is satisfied that there was sufficient cause for not filing the appeal but such period shall not exceed fifteen days”. In Ashdan Properties Pvt. Ltd. v. DSK Global Education and Research Pvt. Ltd., 2025 INSC 959, the Supreme Court read those closing words as a ceiling, so that an extension cannot exceed fifteen days whatever the circumstances presented to the tribunal.
A case decided in September 2026 arose within that ceiling and did not raise it. In Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Mamta Binani, 2026 INSC 1003, the appeal against the approval of a resolution plan had to be filed by 29 January 2026, counting the thirty days and the further fifteen together. The tribunal’s e-filing portal did not accept the papers upon either 28 or 29 January, because the one-time passwords which the system sends were not delivered, and the appeal was eventually filed on 30 January. The tribunal declined to condone the delay, upon the footing that it had no power to go beyond the statutory period at all.
The Supreme Court set that order aside and remitted the matter for a fresh decision upon sufficient cause, holding that the appellate tribunal ought to have invoked the higher principle of actus curiae neminem gravabit, and that a litigant cannot be rendered remediless upon the specious ground that the court or tribunal has no power to condone the delay. The reasoning does not lengthen the period of fifteen days, but determines instead the date of presentation. Limitation runs against a litigant only when the court or tribunal is open and functional, in the sense that it is capable of receiving the papers pertaining to the lis sought to be presented. The appeal was therefore treated as having been presented upon the date of the first bona fide attempt to file it, and the distinction between extending a period of limitation and determining the date of presentation is what reconciles the two decisions with each other.
Criminal courts and the bar on altering a judgment under the BNSS
Criminal courts operate under a statutory bar expressed in the plainest terms, since Section 403 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 permits a court which has signed its judgment to correct nothing beyond a clerical or arithmetical error. The provision reads: “Save as otherwise provided by this Sanhita or by any other law for the time being in force, no Court, when it has signed its judgment or final order disposing of a case, shall alter or review the same except to correct a clerical or arithmetical error.” The section corresponds to Section 362 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, so that a reader working from the older code will find the case law reported under that number. Its marginal heading, “Court not to alter judgment”, states the rule as plainly as the text itself does.
The contrast with the civil position is a sharp one. A civil court retains a power of review under Section 114 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, confined to its three grounds, whereas a criminal court retains no power of review at all once it has signed its judgment. All that remains to a criminal court is the correction of a slip, which is the same narrow category employed by Section 152 of the civil Code, and nothing wider than that. The opening words of Section 403 carry a qualification of their own, since the phrase “save as otherwise provided by this Sanhita or by any other law for the time being in force” preserves those particular powers which the Sanhita confers elsewhere.
The bar forbids the same court to alter or review its own signed judgment, and a litigant who discovers an error in such a judgment is therefore directed outwards rather than back. His remedy is an appeal where the Sanhita provides one, and a revision where it does not. A petition for special leave under Article 136 of the Constitution of India lies above both, and where the judgment in question is that of the Supreme Court itself, a review and thereafter a curative petition lie in that Court. None of those routes involves the exercise by the trial court or by the High Court of a power to alter what it has already signed, and a principle of justice and equity cannot supply a forum which the Sanhita has not created.
The question that then arises is whether inherent power can supply what Section 403 withholds. Section 528 of the Sanhita saves the inherent powers of the High Court in the same terms as Section 482 of the old Code, and petitions have regularly asked a High Court to recall its own criminal orders under that saving. The answer given by the Supreme Court in 2025 was that inherent power cannot be employed to do what the Sanhita expressly forbids.
The Court gave that answer upon facts in which a High Court had reversed itself and had then gone further. In State of Rajasthan v. Parmeshwar Ramlal Joshi, 2025 INSC 1205, a single judge of the Rajasthan High Court dismissed a criminal writ petition, afterwards recalled that dismissal, entertained a second petition seeking the same relief, and directed an investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation. The Supreme Court quashed those orders, holding that a criminal court has no power to recall or review its own judgment and that the only permissible action is the correction or rectification of a clerical error. It found no clerical error capable of justifying the recall, and it observed that once the writ petition stood dismissed, a second petition seeking the same relief could not have been entertained.
Judgments recalled although Section 403 BNSS bars review
A criminal judgment may nevertheless be recalled where the court had no jurisdiction to pass it, because in that situation the bar in Section 403 has nothing upon which to operate. The Supreme Court so held in September 2026 in Mahavir @ Avnish v. State of Madhya Pradesh, stating that the bar of Section 362 of the Code of Criminal Procedure shall not operate in cases where the order or judgment under consideration was without jurisdiction.
The facts of that case show what the proposition is worth in practice. The appellant had been convicted under the second part of Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, for causing the disappearance of evidence, and the Madhya Pradesh High Court affirmed that conviction in 2017. An inquiry conducted by a Juvenile Justice Board afterwards established that he had been seventeen years, two months and twelve days of age upon the date of the offence in September 2004. The High Court nevertheless declined to recall its judgment, treating the conviction as final.
Setting that refusal aside, the Supreme Court held that a procedural review of an order which lacks jurisdiction remains permissible notwithstanding the bar upon substantive review, and it invoked ex debito justitiae in holding that a wrong occurring within the machinery of the administration of justice must be remedied. The distinction to be carried away from these two decisions is narrow but stable. Section 403 prevents a second examination of a question which the court has decided, and it does not protect an order which the court had no power to pass at all.
Litigant default as the outer limit of actus curiae neminem gravabit
The default of the litigant is the point at which actus curiae neminem gravabit stops, because the maxim protects a litigant against an act of the court and against nothing else. Three things lie outside it, and it is convenient to count them: a loss brought about by the party or by his counsel, an advantage which the party himself obtained from the court, and a power which the legislature has withheld.
The default of counsel is the commonest of the three and the least readily conceded. A date missed because the advocate did not appear is not an act of the court, and neither is an application for a copy filed a fortnight after the judgment was pronounced. The remedy in such cases lies in Section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963, read together with the ordinary law of professional negligence. Order 9 Rule 9 of the Code marks the same division upon the civil side, since a suit dismissed for the plaintiff’s own non-appearance is restored upon the plaintiff showing sufficient cause, and not upon the court accepting any part of the blame.
Advantages a party persuaded the court into giving
A party who persuaded the court to make an order and then lost the case is the person against whom restitution is directed, rather than a person entitled to claim it. That is the test in South Eastern Coalfields applied in the direction in which it is less often read. The enquiry there was whether the party’s own act in persuading the court had produced an advantage which that party would not otherwise have earned, and where it had, the advantage must be given up.
An order that is ultimately held to be unsustainable confers no vested right, and that is why what it gave is returned rather than compensated for. A party who obtained an interim stay of recovery and afterwards lost the appeal has had the use of the money in the intervening period, so that interest is the measure of what the order in fact gave him. Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action applied compound interest to precisely that purpose, upon the reasoning that a simple refund would have left the delay profitable to the party who caused it.
The two propositions are complementary rather than opposed. An act of the court must not prejudice a litigant, and a litigant must not profit from an order which the court was persuaded to make. Each proposition protects the position which the parties would have occupied had the order never been made, and that position is the only one at which either rule is directed.
Powers actus curiae neminem gravabit does not create
Actus curiae neminem gravabit is not a source of jurisdiction, and it cannot therefore found a power which a statute has withheld. Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 supplements the Code and cannot be exercised against an express provision of it. Section 528 of the Sanhita cannot be used to undo Section 403, and the proviso to Section 61(2) of the insolvency legislation continues to cap condonation at fifteen days, which is what Ashdan Properties decided.
The maxim is not interchangeable with the Latin phrases that commonly travel alongside it. Ex debito justitiae describes an obligation owed as of right, which is what a court discharges when it corrects its own procedural error, and it is the phrase actually used in Grindlays Bank and in Mahavir. Sublato fundamento cadit opus states that once the foundation is removed the superstructure falls, which is why orders built upon an order subsequently set aside fall along with it. Each of these works alongside actus curiae neminem gravabit without translating it, in much the same way that a canon of construction such as casus omissus answers a question about the reading of a statute rather than a question about an act of the court.
Article 142(1) of the Constitution of India is the widest power in this field, and it permits the Supreme Court, in the exercise of its jurisdiction, to pass such decree or make such order as is necessary for doing complete justice in any cause or matter pending before it. The Constitution Bench in High Court Bar Association, Allahabad held in 2024 that this power cannot be exercised so as to override the substantive rights of litigants or the principles of natural justice. It further held that the right to be heard is a substantive entitlement and not a matter of procedure, and that constitutional courts should ordinarily refrain from fixing time limits for the disposal of cases pending in other courts. Complete justice therefore extends to a litigant prejudiced by an act of the court, and it stops short of the rights of a person who was never before the court at all.
Frequently asked questions
What does actus curiae neminem gravabit mean in simple terms?
The maxim means that an act of the court shall prejudice no one. Where a court, a registry or a tribunal has itself caused a litigant to lose time, money or a remedy, that court must place the litigant in the position which they would have occupied had the act not been done. The Supreme Court described the duty in Jang Singh v. Brijlal, AIR 1966 SC 1631, as a bounden duty of courts, and it extends to the whole chain of courts that handled the matter rather than to the particular court that erred.
Which section of the Code of Civil Procedure carries actus curiae neminem gravabit?
No single section carries it, and four sections give effect to it in different situations. Section 144 directs restitution once a decree or order has been varied, reversed, set aside or modified, while Section 152 permits the correction of clerical and arithmetical mistakes and of errors arising from an accidental slip or omission. Section 153 permits the amendment of any defect or error in a proceeding, and Section 151 saves the inherent power to make such orders as are necessary for the ends of justice. In South Eastern Coalfields Ltd. v. State of M.P., (2003) 8 SCC 648, the Supreme Court held that Section 144 is a statutory recognition of a pre-existing rule rather than the source of the duty.
Can a court condone delay beyond a statutory outer limit using this maxim?
A court cannot extend the limit, although it may hold that the limit was never crossed at all. In Ashdan Properties Pvt. Ltd. v. DSK Global Education and Research Pvt. Ltd., 2025 INSC 959, the Supreme Court held that the further fifteen days allowed by the proviso to Section 61(2) of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 are an outer boundary. In Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Mamta Binani, 2026 INSC 1003, the Court held that where a tribunal’s own portal had refused the papers, the appeal counted as presented upon the date of the first bona fide attempt, because limitation runs only for so long as a forum is open and able to receive what is presented to it.
Does the maxim help where the litigant’s own counsel caused the delay?
The maxim does not help in that situation, because it answers for an act of the court and not for the conduct of a party or of an advocate. A date missed by counsel is dealt with under Section 5 of the Limitation Act, 1963, where the litigant must satisfy the court that he had sufficient cause for not filing within time. Section 14 of the same Act excludes time spent before a court that was unable to entertain the matter, but it does so only where the earlier proceeding was prosecuted with due diligence and in good faith.
Can a criminal court recall its judgment under actus curiae neminem gravabit?
A criminal court may do so only where the order in question was passed without jurisdiction. Section 403 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which corresponds to Section 362 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, permits a court that has signed its judgment to correct nothing beyond a clerical or arithmetical error. In State of Rajasthan v. Parmeshwar Ramlal Joshi, 2025 INSC 1205, the Supreme Court held that inherent power under Section 482 cannot be used to recall an order upon the same materials. The position differs where jurisdiction was lacking, and in Mahavir @ Avnish v. State of Madhya Pradesh, decided in September 2026, the Court held that the bar does not operate upon an order that was made without jurisdiction.
Which Supreme Court judgments are the leading authorities on this maxim?
Six judgments carry most of the weight, beginning with Jang Singh v. Brijlal, AIR 1966 SC 1631, which states the duty itself, while A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak, (1988) 2 SCC 602, applies it to the Supreme Court’s own earlier direction. South Eastern Coalfields Ltd. v. State of M.P., (2003) 8 SCC 648, defines an act of the court and supplies the test for restitution, and Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, (2011) 8 SCC 161, applies restitution against the beneficiary of an interim order. High Court Bar Association, Allahabad v. State of Uttar Pradesh, decided in February 2024, carries the Constitution Bench statement at paragraph 16, and Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Mamta Binani, 2026 INSC 1003, deals with limitation and a tribunal’s own filing system. Guidance on deploying authorities of this kind in a written paper is collected separately under judiciary mains answer writing.
References
- Rodger v. Comptoir d’Escompte de Paris, (1871) LR 3 PC 465 (Privy Council), case report.
- Jang Singh v. Brijlal, AIR 1966 SC 1631 : 1964 SCR (2) 145 (Supreme Court of India, 20 February 1963), judgment text.
- A.R. Antulay v. R.S. Nayak, (1988) 2 SCC 602 : AIR 1988 SC 1531 (7-judge bench, 29 April 1988), judgment text.
- Grindlays Bank Ltd. v. Central Government Industrial Tribunal (Supreme Court of India, 12 December 1980), judgment text (procedural review; uses ex debito justitiae).
- Kavita Trehan v. Balsara Hygiene Products Ltd. (Supreme Court of India, 11 July 1994).
- South Eastern Coalfields Ltd. v. State of M.P., (2003) 8 SCC 648 : AIR 2003 SC 4482 (13 October 2003), judgment text (paragraph 26).
- Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action v. Union of India, (2011) 8 SCC 161 (18 July 2011), judgment text.
- High Court Bar Association, Allahabad v. State of Uttar Pradesh (Constitution Bench, 29 February 2024), judgment text (paragraphs 16 and 37).
- Ashdan Properties Pvt. Ltd. v. DSK Global Education and Research Pvt. Ltd., 2025 INSC 959 (13 August 2025), report.
- State of Rajasthan v. Parmeshwar Ramlal Joshi, 2025 INSC 1205 (9 October 2025), report.
- Ram Chandra Choudhary v. Roop Nagar Dugdh Utpadak Sahakari Samiti Ltd., 2026 INSC 347 (10 April 2026), judgment PDF.
- Mahavir @ Avnish v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 892 (Supreme Court of India, 2 September 2026), report.
- Regional Provident Fund Commissioner-II v. Mamta Binani, 2026 INSC 1003 (10 September 2026), judgment text and case note.
- Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, Sections 114, 144, 148, 149, 151, 152 and 153, and Order XLVII Rule 1.
- Limitation Act, 1963, Sections 4, 5, 12 and 14.
- Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Sections 403 and 528.
- Constitution of India, Article 142.
- Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, Section 61.
- General Clauses Act, 1897, Section 10.
Disclaimer
This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Whether a particular delay or loss is attributable to an act of the court, and which provision supplies the remedy, depends on the record of the case, the forum and the statute under which the proceeding was brought. For advice on a specific matter, consult a qualified advocate.
