The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday dismissed an appeal by three people challenging a 2001 will that left their grandmother’s properties to her surviving sons, ruling that the document was validly executed and free of doubts.
In a 11-page order uploaded on Thursday, Justice Pankaj Jain upheld lower court findings in favour of the respondents, Saroj Gupta and others, who defended the will as a genuine expression of the late Shanti Devi’s wishes. The appellants, Vinod Gupta and his siblings, had sought a one-fourth share in the suit properties, claiming the will was forged and that they were entitled to inherit as co-owners after their grandmother’s death in June 2003.
Shanti Devi and her husband, the late Siri Ram, had four sons and three daughters. One of the sons, Gobind Ram, who is the father of the appellants, died in 1989. The will, dated February 27, 2001, bequeathed the main property to another son, Ashok Gupta, and two other properties to his brothers Rajender Gupta and Subhash Gupta. The respondents argued that Shanti Devi, who lived with Subhash Gupta’s family for the last 20 years of her life, executed it out of love and affection while in sound health.
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The appellants contended that the will failed legal tests for proper signing and witnessing, and that excluding them despite cordial family ties raised red flags. They also alleged forgery but offered no proof.
Justice Jain, after reviewing witness statements, found no merit in these claims. He noted that three attesting witnesses testified to seeing Shanti Devi acknowledge and thumb-mark the document in their presence, both privately and before the sub-registrar during registration. Even if one witness joined after initial drafting, “the testimony of two other witnesses namely Sunder Lal and Jagdish Prasad satisfies the requirement” for validation, the judge observed, drawing from Supreme Court guidelines on will execution.
‘Family exclusions not inherently suspect’
On the suspicion angle, the court rejected the idea that simply leaving out natural heirs without cause voids a will. Shanti Devi had explained in the document that her sons Ashok, Rajender and Subhash, along with Subhash’s wife Saroj, cared for her deeply, with Saroj showing “regard more than her own mother”.
Justice Jain clarified, “Execution of [a] will is always a departure from the natural succession. Once reasons have been assigned to execute a will in favour of a beneficiary, mere exclusion of some of the legal heirs cannot be taken to be [an] abnormal circumstance which can be termed as suspicious to dislodge the will.”
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The ruling emphasises that wills need clear witnessing by at least two people who confirm the signer’s intent, but family exclusions are not inherently suspect if justified. It aligns with recent Supreme Court precedents stressing that doubts must be “real, germane and valid” rather than imagined.
The appellants were represented by senior advocate Amit Jain with Anupam Mathur and Aryaman Thakur, while Mohit Chaudhary appeared for the respondents.
The original suit, filed in 2016, was dismissed by the trial court, a decision the high court affirmed on appeal.
