On 13 December 2000, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court — Justice D.P. Mohapatra authoring, with Chief Justice B.N. Kirpal on the panel — set out the foundational architecture for repudiation of a life-insurance policy under the second part of Section 45 of the Insurance Act 1938. The judgment held that after the two-year incontestability window, an insurer can repudiate only by establishing cumulatively that the impugned statement was on a material matter, that the suppression was fraudulent, and that the policyholder knew at the time of making the statement that it was false. The burden is a heavy one; mere inaccuracy is not enough.