HC rejects execution of 'doubtful, suspicious' will

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Pointing to the suspicious circumstances of a Will, the High Court has refused to consider it as genuine and rejected its execution. The Court noted that the alleged Will of one Lakkappa, had excluded his own children and made provisions in favour of his brother’s son. But the beneficiary who produced the Will was unable to prove it was genuine.

“Alleged Will was executed in favour of defendant No.2 and by that time, defendant No.1 and also sister and brother were also alive and what made to execute the Will in favour of defendant No.2 has not been properly explained and the very disinheritance of the property excluding the other members of the family also gives room for suspicious circumstances,” Justice HP Sandesh said in his recent judgment on an appeal filed by one Sreenivasamurthy, son on late Venkatappa. A Will dated June 8, 1993 allegedly executed by Lakkanna aka Lakkashetty, the head of a Hindu Joint Family was the at the centre of dispute.

The Will bequeathed the family property to Sreenivasamurthy. Other members of the joint family claimed that the Will was not genuine and approached the trial court. The trial court ruled in their favour. An appeal in the District Court also went in their favour. Sreenivasamurthy then approached the HC in 2018 which gave its judgement recently. The HC said that it was for Sreenivasamurthy to prove that the Will was genuine.

“Since the very genuineness of the execution of the Will is doubtful and there are suspicious circumstances and burden lies on the defendant No.2 who propounded the Will to remove all suspicious circumstances shrouding the making of Will by cogent and convincing explanation and no such explanation is given by defendant No.2 to accept his contention that Will was executed in his favour,” the HC said.