Sardari Lal v. Bishan Dass (2026): a will that disinherits the sole Class I heir for strangers, with unexplained registrar cuttings and false recitals, is shrouded in suspicious circumstances

On 6 July 2026, a Bench of Justices Manoj Misra (who authored the opinion) and K.V. Viswanathan decided Sardari Lal v. Bishan Dass & Ors. (2026 INSC 669), allowing an appeal by the legal representative of a widow whose suit had been decreed by the Trial Court, affirmed in first appeal, and then dismissed by the High Court of Himachal Pradesh at Shimla. The judgment restores the concurrent findings of the two courts of fact that a will propounded against the widow was never validly proved — and, in doing so, marks the outer limit of what a second appellate court may reopen.

The facts

The original plaintiff, Bhambo Devi, was the widow of Chhajju Ram, an illiterate agriculturist who owned the suit property and could only execute a document by thumb impression. He died in 1992 leaving no issue, so that — absent any testamentary disposition — his widow was his sole Class I heir. On these two facts there was no dispute between the parties.

In 1993 the widow filed Civil Suit No. 51 of 1993, seeking a declaration that she was the sole owner in possession and an injunction, alleging that the defendants had got the revenue records mutated in their favour (mutation no. 66 dated 14 August 1992) on the strength of a forged will dated 6 November 1974. The defendants — Bishan Dass and Ram Singh (later represented by his legal representatives) — contested the suit, claiming that Chhajju had executed a registered will of all his property in their favour, out of love and affection and as a reward for services rendered.

During the first appeal the widow died. Sardari Lal, the appellant before the Supreme Court, was eventually brought on record as her legal representative. The Trial Court decreed the suit; the first appellate court affirmed it; and on 18 July 2016, in Regular Second Appeal No. 475 of 2003, the High Court set aside both decrees and dismissed the suit. That reversal was the subject of the present appeal (Civil Appeal No. 10990 of 2016). The Court heard Ms. Radhika Gautam for the appellant and Shri Rajesh Gupta for the respondents.

The pleadings point: an alternative plea is not an admission

The respondents' threshold argument was procedural. The widow had pleaded, in the alternative, that the will was the product of fraud, undue influence and importunity; that plea, they said, admitted execution of the will, shifting the burden to her to prove those vitiating factors — a burden she never discharged, having examined no witness of fact.

The Court rejected this. A plaintiff may plead inconsistent sets of allegations in the alternative, and an alternative challenge to a will on grounds of fraud does not amount to admitting its execution, because an admission must be "clear, unequivocal and unconditional." More fundamentally, the widow's core pleas — that she was the lawfully wedded wife and sole Class I heir of the admitted owner — were not traversed in the written statement, and so stood admitted under the doctrine of non-traverse in Order VIII Rule 5 CPC. To defeat those admitted facts, the defendants had to prove the will; and the burden to prove due execution of a testamentary disposition always lies on its propounder, regardless of whether the challenger leads any evidence of fraud. Non-examination of the plaintiff therefore made no material difference.

The test: proving a will is more than proving attestation

The Court restated the settled law on proof of wills. Proving a will is not merely proving the testator's signature and its attestation under Section 63 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 by the mode prescribed in Section 68 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 — that is only the first step. The exercise is complete only when the propounder satisfies the court's conscience that the testator signed the will with free will, aware of its contents, after understanding the nature and effect of its dispositions. Where suspicious circumstances surround the execution, the onus is on the propounder to explain them and dispel the doubts before the will can be accepted as genuine. What qualifies as "suspicious" is left open-ended, though it cannot be a figment of imagination or the fantasy of a doubting mind.

Applying the test: three circumstances that stuck

The Court then worked through the circumstances the first appellate court had relied on, and did not accept all of them.

Disinheriting the widow. Disinheriting a wife is not, by itself, always suspicious — where the beneficiaries are other Class I heirs such as a son or daughter, the testator may simply be arranging his estate. But here the beneficiaries were not natural heirs at all.

The will's own explanations for the disinheritance — that the widow already had jewellery and cash, and that the legatees had served the testator — were found untenable: the extent of the jewellery and cash was never disclosed, the site plan showed the testator and widow lived separately from the legatees, the evidence showed the widow cared for him until his death, and one legatee was away in service while the other was a young student at the time of execution.

Incorrect recitals. Two material statements in the will were shown to be false: that the beneficiaries were the testator's nephews, and that the testator lived with them and was fed and clothed by them. Neither the claimed relationship nor the cohabitation was borne out; the attesting witness himself admitted the testator had a separate house and was cared for by his wife. For an illiterate testator who could not read the deed, false recitals are especially telling.

The uninitialed cuttings. On the back of the will, where the sub-registrar had endorsed the presentation, the presenter had first been named "Laxmi Kant Bassi"; that name was struck out at multiple places and replaced by hand with "Chhajju," and the recorded age was altered from 50 to 55. Crucially, there was no initial or signature of the sub-registrar against any of these cuttings. That, the Court held, created the impression the cuttings were made after the endorsement, and it deprived the propounder of the presumption that flows from due registration — the presumption that the will's contents were read over to Chhajju and that he admitted its execution. Surveying Sections 32, 34, 35, 52 and 58 to 60 of the Registration Act, 1908, the Court held it could not be said with certainty that the registering officer had followed the requisite procedure, so registration did not dispel the doubt.

The Court did not endorse every ground. The timing of the will (1974, when the testator lived until 1992) was, on its own, the testator's prerogative and not suspicious — though it gained weight in conjunction with the other circumstances. And the fact that the attesting witnesses were from another village was held not a material circumstance, since nothing showed the witness did not know the testator or was a "pocket witness" of the beneficiaries.

The Section 100 limit

On the fourth issue, the Court held that whether suspicious circumstances exist and are explained is essentially a question of fact. A second appellate court may interfere only where the court of fact rejected a will on suspicions that were figments of imagination, or proceeded on an erroneous approach in law — for instance, placing the onus of fraud on the wrong party. Neither vice was present here. The two courts of fact had reasoned carefully from real, germane features of a will that disinherited an illiterate testator's sole heir for strangers on false recitals, unrescued by a defective registration. Their refusal to be satisfied raised no substantial question of law, and the High Court exceeded its Section 100 jurisdiction in disturbing it.

Disposition

The appeal was allowed. The High Court's judgment of 18 July 2016 was set aside, and the Trial Court's decree as affirmed by the first appellate court — declaring the widow the owner in possession and injuncting interference — was restored. There was no order as to costs.

Related on Valkya

• Rajat Kumar v. S D Adarsh Jain Vidyalaya: the limits of Section 100 CPC and reversing concurrent decrees
• B.S. Lalitha v. Bhuvanesh: Hindu succession and the Section 6(5) saving clause
• Bejla Oraon v. Kali Das Oraon: custom, proof and tribal inheritance

Sources

• Supreme Court of India, Sardari Lal v. Bishan Dass & Ors., 2026 INSC 669 (Judgment dated 6 July 2026)
• Indian Succession Act, 1925 (Section 63), on India Code
• Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (Section 68), on India Code
• Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 (Section 100), on India Code