Pay Rs 5L for ‘malicious’ tactic: Why Bombay HC rejected son’s plea to examine 78-year-old father’s mental health
NEW DELHI: The Bombay high court has dismissed a man’s plea seeking a medical examination of his 78-year-old father, saying the application under the Mental Healthcare Act was an attempt to use the law as a tool in an ongoing property dispute. The court also imposed exemplary costs of Rs 5 lakh on the son for causing undue harassment to his father. The order was pronounced on August 25, 2026.Why did the son seek his father’s medical examination?According to the court order, Jitendra Gorakh Megh had filed a partition suit against his father, Gorakh Govind Megh, in 2015, seeking his share in their ancestral properties.In December 2025, Jitendra sought appointment of an independent Medical Board under Section 105 of the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, to examine his father’s mental condition. He relied on a medical certificate which recorded that his father was diabetic and had recurrent episodes of low blood sugar along with symptoms such as confusion and forgetfulness.A single judge rejected the application. Jitendra then approached the division bench, arguing that the medical certificate raised a genuine question about his father’s mental capacity and that the law required the matter to be referred to a Medical Board.His father opposed the plea, saying it was another attempt by his son to drag him into litigation and cause harassment. He denied having any mental illness and said the application was an abuse of the legal process.Why did the high court reject the son’s plea?A bench of Justice A S Gadkari and Justice Kamal Khata agreed with the single judge that Section 105 was meant to protect people with mental illness and could not be used by one party as a weapon in a legal dispute.The court noted that the medical certificate only recorded temporary symptoms caused by low blood sugar, which disappeared when the blood sugar level returned to normal.“The Medical Certificate itself acknowledges that these symptoms are temporary in nature and resolve upon restoration of normal blood glucose levels. Significantly, we find that, episodic and reversible symptoms arising from an underlying metabolic condition cannot, prima facie, be equated with or construed as mental illness within the meaning of Section 2(1)(s) of the MHA, 2017,” the bench said.The bench also noted that the same medical certificate had been available since July 2024, but the son had not raised any allegation about his father’s mental condition in earlier proceedings.The court said the timing of the application suggested that it was filed only after attempts to settle the dispute had failed.“In our view, it is nothing short of an afterthought and a malicious proceeding invoked to drag the Respondent No.1 who is around 78 years old into several proceedings so that he would give up and succumb to Appellant’s demands,” it added.The court further said the son had admitted that he had no medical expertise and had not relied on any medical opinion apart from the certificate already on record.“This only reinforces our view that the present appeal is nothing but an abuse of the process of the court,” the court observed.The bench dismissed the appeal and upheld the single judge’s order rejecting the request for a Medical Board examination.It also directed Jitendra to pay Rs 5 lakh as exemplary costs to his father, saying the amount was necessary to discourage frivolous litigation and compensate for the harassment caused to the elderly father.
