NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court has dismissed a property dispute that began in 1985, ruling that the original plaintiff acted “recklessly” by allowing four decades of procedural adjournments to pass without successfully freezing the aging process of their physical body.

A two-judge bench noted that the legal heirs of the original petitioner, who are now themselves entering their twilight years, had “slept on their rights” for 40 years—a period during which the case file had traveled 14 kilometers between various record rooms and survived three major infestations of silverfish.

“A party cannot act recklessly and expect the law to wait for them to finish the inconvenience of dying,” the Court observed, noting that while the Indian judicial system is designed to be eternal, the human lifespan is a private matter of poor planning. “The petitioner had ample opportunity between the 1994 adjournment and the 2012 ‘missing file’ notification to find the Fountain of Youth, yet they chose to succumb to natural causes. This is a clear case of non-prosecution.”

The dispute, which concerns a three-acre plot of land, has outlasted seven Prime Ministers, the introduction of the internet, and the physical building in which the original deed was signed. Legal experts note that the 45-year delay is technically considered a “brisk pace” by the standards of the Records Division, which is still currently processing a dispute regarding a bullock cart from the 1962 harvest.

“The law assists the vigilant, not those who sleep,” said a Ministry Correspondent, speaking on condition of anonymity while filing a request to postpone a 2004 hearing to 2031. “If you want your land back, you must ensure that your grandchildren are born with a law degree and a high tolerance for dust. To expect a verdict within a single generation is, frankly, an abuse of the court’s time.”

The Court further clarified that “sufficient cause” for delay does not include “waiting for a lunch break that lasted from 1998 to 2005,” and ordered the petitioners to pay costs to the state for the storage of their 6,000-page case file, which has since become a load-bearing structure in the High Court basement.