Delhi HC upholds validity of Luxor Group founder DK Jain’s will, dismisses plea by daughter

A division bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar on Tuesday dismissed the appeal filed in this regard and upheld a single judge’s order issued in May this year. The bench observed, “The Will stood for nearly a decade before his demise on 18.03.2014 without being revoked or altered.”

D K Jain, who passed away in March 2014, left behind five legal heirs – his wife Usha Jain, daughters Payal Kapoor, Pooja Jain, and Priya Jain, and son Pankaj Jain. While Priya, Payal and Pankaj had initially challenged the will, Pankaj and Payal subsequently withdrew from contesting it after settling their disputes through the Memorandum of Oral Family Settlements, leaving only Priya to contest the will.

Priya, the youngest daughter, had contended that the will was a forged and fabricated document, created to oust all the legal heirs of D K Jain and to vest his entire estate solely in favour of his wife Usha “who is completely under the control and influence” of Pooja.

Priya had also raised suspicions on several aspects of the will – wrong spellings where her father’s name Davinder was spelled as Devendra, and non-registration of the will. She also claimed that being Jain’s unmarried daughter, “for whom he had extreme love and affection,” there was no reason given in the will for not providing her with anything from his estate.

To further her case, Priya had also pointed out that though the will was purportedly made in 2004, the paper appeared fresh and nothing akin to what a 10-year-old document would look like, thus raising doubts that the will may have been typed out much after 2004 on blank papers containing Jain’s signatures which may have been obtained on different occasions.

In an order on May 29, the single bench of Justice Navin Chawla of the Delhi High Court had dismissed Priya’s suspicions, noting that the evidence on record “does not raise a suspicion on the validity of the subject Will”.

Notably, Jain’s wife and Priya’s mother Usha, the sole beneficiary of the estate, had refused to enter the witness box, which Priya had argued, “is for the reason that on being cross-examined, she may have proved that the subject Will is not a genuine one.”

The court had, however, found no merit in this submission, recording that Usha was under no legal obligation to enter into the witness box. “Even otherwise, being the head of the family, she may have wanted to save herself an embarrassment of being cross-examined by her own daughter, and may have saved her from saying things which may not have been very palatable for her daughter and might have spoiled their relationship,” it said.

Justice Chawla had ruled that the execution of the will was duly proved and was in accordance with the provisions of the Indian Succession Act.

Priya had then appealed against the single judge’s verdict before a division bench of the high court.

On Tuesday, the division bench dismissed Priya’s appeal, stating, “It is not in dispute that the Will deviates from the principles of natural succession, in that it confers the bulk of the estate upon one heir, to the exclusion or partial exclusion of others. However, the law imposes no obligation upon a testator to record reasons for unequal bequests, provided the document is otherwise duly executed and free from suspicious circumstances.”

Noting that Jain’s will indicates that he “consciously considered all family members and made an alternative arrangement for succession in the event his wife dies during his lifetime”, the bench observed, “This shows he was aware of the uncertainties of life and had planned the distribution accordingly.”

The court held that the objection regarding the spelling variations in Jain’s name “is immaterial, as the phonetic similarity and contextual identification leave no doubt as to the intended person.”