By S&S Co. Advocates & Solicitors · Published 15 October 2026 · Informational content, not legal advice: see our disclaimer
A client served with a foreign arbitration notice sometimes wants the fastest possible way out: an order from an Indian court telling the other side to stop the arbitration altogether. This is a different animal from the far more common request for interim relief in aid of an arbitration, and it is also different from an anti-suit injunction restraining a foreign court proceeding. An anti-arbitration injunction asks an Indian civil court to stop an arbitral process itself, often one seated thousands of kilometres away, and Indian courts have been visibly uneasy about granting that kind of relief.
The law on this point is not fully settled and continues to be argued case by case, but a reasonably clear framework has emerged from the Supreme Court's own decisions, and it is worth understanding both what that framework allows and why it so rarely results in an actual injunction.
Why This Is Not the Same as an Anti-Suit Injunction
An anti-suit injunction restrains a party from pursuing proceedings before a foreign court, usually because a contract has a valid forum selection or arbitration clause pointing somewhere else, or because the foreign proceeding is vexatious or oppressive. An anti-arbitration injunction restrains a party from continuing an arbitration, which is a private, consensual process the parties themselves chose, often through a carefully negotiated clause. Courts are naturally more reluctant to interfere with a process the parties agreed to than with litigation forced on an unwilling party, which is the main reason the threshold for an anti-arbitration injunction sits higher.
The statutory anchor for a foreign-seated arbitration is Section 45 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, which deals with enforcement of arbitration agreements falling under the New York Convention. Section 45 requires a judicial authority, when seized of a matter covered by such an agreement, to refer the parties to arbitration unless it finds the agreement is null and void, inoperative, or incapable of being performed. That three-ground test, not a general sense that arbitration would be inconvenient or unfair, is where any attempt to resist or injunct the arbitration has to be built.
The Supreme Court's Framework in World Sport Group
In World Sport Group (Mauritius) Ltd. v. MSM Satellite (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., the Supreme Court set aside a Bombay High Court order that had restrained a foreign-seated arbitration on the ground that the underlying agreement was alleged to have been obtained by fraud. The Court held that under Section 45, the inquiry is confined to whether the arbitration agreement itself, not the main contract, is null and void, inoperative, or incapable of being performed. Allegations that the substantive contract is tainted by fraud do not, without more, satisfy that test, since an arbitration clause is treated as a distinct, severable agreement.
The Court also recognised that a civil court retains an inherent power, outside the Arbitration Act itself, to grant an anti-arbitration injunction in an appropriate case, drawing on its ordinary jurisdiction under the Code of Civil Procedure. This is an important qualification. It means the remedy is not entirely closed off even where Section 45's three grounds are not made out, but the Court was equally clear that this inherent power should be used sparingly and only where the arbitration agreement is, on a proper reading, incapable of being enforced at all.
What a Party Actually Has to Show
In practice, successful applications have tended to fall into a narrow set of situations. One is where the arbitration agreement was procured by fraud or coercion specifically directed at the agreement to arbitrate, rather than the contract generally. Another is where the agreement is so vague or contradictory about the arbitral mechanism that no tribunal could sensibly be constituted under it, making the clause incapable of being performed in a literal sense. A third, narrower situation is where continuing the foreign arbitration itself, independent of the underlying contract dispute, would be an abuse of process, for instance where it duplicates an earlier proceeding already decided or pending between the same parties on the same issue.
What rarely works is an argument that the foreign tribunal is inconvenient, that litigation would be cheaper, or that the Indian party expects to lose on the merits. Courts treat these as ordinary consequences of having agreed to arbitrate, not grounds that touch the validity or capability of the arbitration agreement under Section 45.
A Cautionary Example From the High Courts
High Courts have occasionally granted anti-arbitration injunctions where a party continued to press ahead with a foreign arbitration despite a pending Section 45 application challenging the agreement's validity in India. One such case treated the continuation of the foreign proceedings in those circumstances as vexatious and oppressive, and restrained them. When the arbitration went ahead regardless and an award was later rendered, a court held that an award obtained in defiance of an operative injunction could not be enforced in India.
This sequence is a useful illustration of how high the stakes can get. A party on the receiving end of such an injunction, who proceeds with the arbitration anyway on the view that the injunction was wrongly granted, risks ending up with an award that cannot be enforced in India at all, even if it would otherwise be a perfectly valid New York Convention award. The safer course, where an anti-arbitration injunction has actually been granted, is to challenge it through appeal rather than simply ignore it and continue arbitrating.
Timing: When Can This Application Even Be Made
An anti-arbitration injunction can in principle be sought before the arbitration begins, while it is underway, or even after the final hearing has concluded but before the award is rendered. Once a final award has actually been issued, the appropriate route shifts to resisting its enforcement under Section 48 of the Act, on the narrow public policy and procedural grounds available there, rather than seeking to injunct a process that has already run its course. This timing distinction matters for strategy. A party that waits too long loses the injunction route altogether and is left arguing enforcement defences that are, if anything, even narrower than the Section 45 test.
There is also a practical reason to move early rather than waiting to see how the arbitration unfolds. A tribunal that has already heard substantial evidence and argument is understandably reluctant to see the process derailed at a late stage, and a court asked to injunct at that point has to weigh the cost of discarding work already done against whatever defect is alleged in the underlying agreement. Filing the application as soon as the arbitration agreement's validity is genuinely in doubt, rather than after the arbitration has made real progress, gives the application a materially better chance of being heard on its merits rather than being coloured by how far the process has already advanced.
Practical Advice Before Filing Such an Application
Given how narrow the actual grounds are, a party should resist the temptation to file an anti-arbitration injunction suit as a reflexive first response to an unwelcome foreign notice of arbitration. Filing weakly and failing tends to do more damage than not filing at all, since it signals to the tribunal and the other side that the party has no real objection to the arbitration agreement's validity, only a preference to avoid the forum. Before filing, it is worth building a specific case around the arbitration agreement itself, supported by correspondence or drafting history showing fraud in the inducement of that clause, or genuine uncertainty about how any tribunal could be constituted under it, rather than generalised complaints about the underlying commercial dispute.
Counsel should also weigh the forum carefully. Filing in a High Court that has no real connection to the parties or the agreement invites an early objection on territorial jurisdiction, which wastes the very time an injunction application is meant to save. The stronger practice is to anchor the suit in the court that would ordinarily have jurisdiction over the respondent or the subject matter of the dispute, and to plead the Section 45 grounds with specific reference to the clause's wording rather than in general terms borrowed from another case's facts.
Frequently Asked Questions
We think the whole contract was obtained by fraud. Can we use that to stop the arbitration in an Indian court?
Generally not by itself. Under Section 45 and World Sport Group, the inquiry is limited to whether the arbitration agreement itself, not the main contract, is null and void, inoperative or incapable of being performed. Fraud affecting the broader contract usually has to be argued before the tribunal, not used to stop the arbitration.
Is an anti-arbitration injunction the same thing as getting interim relief under Section 9?
No. Section 9 relief supports an arbitration that is proceeding, for example by preserving assets or the subject matter of the dispute. An anti-arbitration injunction tries to stop the arbitration itself from continuing, which is a far more intrusive remedy and is granted far less often.
Can we get this injunction after the arbitration hearing is already over?
It becomes very difficult once a final award has actually been rendered. At that stage the usual route is to resist enforcement of the award under Section 48 on the available public policy and procedural grounds, rather than to injunct a process that has already concluded.
What happens if we ignore an anti-arbitration injunction and continue the foreign arbitration anyway?
Courts have held that an award obtained in violation of a subsisting injunction cannot be enforced in India. The safer course is to challenge the injunction itself through appeal, not to proceed with the arbitration while it remains in force.
Does a civil court have power to grant this kind of injunction even outside the specific grounds in Section 45?
The Supreme Court in World Sport Group recognised an inherent power under the ordinary civil procedure framework to grant such relief in an appropriate case, but indicated this power should be used sparingly, essentially where the arbitration agreement cannot be enforced at all.
References & Further Reading
The provisions and rulings below were relied on for this guide. The position can change with amendments and later decisions, so check the current text and the latest case law before acting on any of it.
- Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, Sections 45 and 48
- World Sport Group (Mauritius) Ltd. v. MSM Satellite (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Supreme Court of India
- Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, Section 9 (inherent civil jurisdiction)