Many people assume that once a will is registered, it is beyond challenge. In Sardari Lal v. Bishan Dass [2026 INSC 669], decided on July 6, 2026, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that this is not so. A Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and K.V. Viswanathan restored a widow's title to her late husband's property, holding that a registered 1974 will propounded by non-relatives was rightly discarded because the circumstances surrounding it were never satisfactorily explained.
The judgment, authored by Justice Misra, sets aside a Himachal Pradesh High Court ruling and revives the concurrent findings of the trial court and the first appellate court.
Background
Chhajju Ram, an illiterate agriculturist, owned the property in dispute. He died in 1992, issueless, and his widow Bhambo Devi would ordinarily have succeeded to his entire estate as his sole Class I heir the closest category of legal heirs, which includes a spouse. The respondents, distant relatives who described themselves as his nephews, instead produced a registered will dated November 6, 1974, bequeathing everything to them, and used it to get the revenue records mutated updated to show them as owners in their favour.
Bhambo Devi sued, contending that her husband had executed no will, that the document was a forgery, and, in the alternative, that it was the product of fraud and undue influence. She died during the litigation; the present appellant, Sardari Lal, was eventually brought on record as her legal heir.
The will's stated reason for cutting out the widow was that she was already well provided for with jewellery and cash, and that the beneficiaries said to be the testator's nephews who lived with him and fed and clothed the couple deserved to be rewarded for their service.
What the courts found
The trial court and the first appellate court both refused to accept the will, listing several suspicious features: the disinheritance of a caring wife for strangers; the absence of any proof that the beneficiaries were the testator's nephews; the execution of the will in 1974 when the testator lived until 1992; and, most seriously, a series of uninitialed cuttings on the reverse of the document, where the name of the person who presented it for registration had been changed at multiple places from "Laxmi Kant Bassi" to "Chhajju."
The High Court reversed. It reasoned that once an attesting witness (DW-2) had proved execution under Section 63 of the Succession Act the provision setting out how a valid will must be signed and witnessed the will stood proved, and that cuttings on the back page could not undo that when the front page bore the testator's thumb impression.
The Supreme Court's reasoning
The Supreme Court disagreed with the High Court's premise. Proving execution, it held, is not the end of the inquiry.
"This is just the first step in that exercise. The exercise is complete when the propounder satisfies the Court's conscience that the testator had signed the Will with free will, being aware of its contents, and after understanding the nature and effect of the dispositions in the Will."
The propounder the person putting the will forward carries the burden throughout, and where a will is shrouded in suspicious circumstances, must explain them.
The Court was careful not to treat every ground relied on below as decisive. The timing of a will, it observed, is the testator's prerogative and is not by itself suspicious, though it can become relevant in combination with other facts. Nor was it suspicious that the attesting witnesses came from another village; there is no rule that a witness must belong to the testator's village, and nothing showed these witnesses did not know him. To that extent, the Court held, the first appellate court had been wrong to draw suspicion.
What remained, however, was fatal. The disinheritance of the sole Class I heir in favour of people who were not close relatives was, on the facts, unnatural. The explanation offered in the will did not survive scrutiny: the extent of the widow's jewellery and cash was never disclosed; a site plan showed the couple lived separately from the beneficiaries; the evidence showed the widow cared for her husband until his death; and the beneficiaries could not have been serving him when the will was made, as one was away in service and the other was only a schoolboy. As the Court put it, "the bequest appears unnatural and pinches the Court's conscience."
Crucially, the will's own recitals that the beneficiaries were the testator's nephews and that he lived with them and was fed and clothed by them were shown to be false. For an illiterate testator who could only affix a thumb impression, that mattered a great deal.
"In our view, illiteracy of the testator coupled with incorrect statements in the Will raises a serious doubt as to whether the testator executed the Will after fully understanding its content."
This is where registration might have rescued the will but did not. Surveying the Registration Act, the Court noted that a registering officer must satisfy himself as to the identity of the person presenting a document and that it was actually executed by them. Here, the name on the endorsement had been changed from "Laxmi Kant Bassi" to "Chhajju" at several places, with no initials of the Sub-Registrar against the cuttings, creating the impression that they were made after the endorsement. Because the registration procedure could not be shown to have been properly followed, the presumption that the will had been read over to Chhajju and admitted by him before the officer simply fell away.
The Court also cleared up two points of pleading and procedure that recur in will disputes. A plaintiff is entitled to plead in the alternative that no will was executed and that any will was obtained by fraud; taking the second plea does not amount to admitting the first, because an admission must be clear and unconditional. And the widow's failure to enter the witness box did not defeat her suit: her status as the wife and sole Class I heir was never denied in the written statement, so it stood admitted under the doctrine of non-traverse the rule that an allegation not specifically denied is treated as accepted and the burden of proving the will still lay on those relying on it.
Finally, on the reach of a second appeal, the Court held that what counts as a suspicious circumstance is a question of fact. Since the concurrent findings below rested on real and germane circumstances rather than fanciful ones, the High Court had exceeded its jurisdiction under Section 100 of the Civil Procedure Code which limits second appeals to substantial questions of law in overturning them.
Why it matters
For anyone making a will, the ruling is a practical caution. Registration is useful, but it is not a shield: an endorsement marred by unexplained, uninitialed corrections can cost the will the very presumption registration is meant to confer. If a will departs from the natural line of succession above all, if it cuts out a spouse the reasons given should be genuine and capable of proof, not boilerplate. And where a testator cannot read, the safest course is to ensure the document says nothing that can later be shown to be untrue.
For litigators, the judgment restates settled but frequently contested ground. The burden to prove due execution never shifts off the propounder; a challenger need not prove fraud to defeat a will if its execution is itself in doubt; inconsistent pleas are permissible; and a court hearing a second appeal cannot reopen fact-based findings on suspicious circumstances dressed up as questions of law.
The outcome
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and set aside the High Court's judgment. The trial court's decree, as affirmed by the first appellate court, stands restored: the will dated November 6, 1974 is discarded. The plaintiff is declared the owner in possession of the suit property; and the permanent injunction restraining the respondents from interfering with that possession is revived, with the benefit passing to the widow's legal heir. The mutation obtained on the strength of the will cannot survive. The Court made no order as to costs and disposed of all pending applications.
Case Title: Sardari Lal v. Bishan Dass & Ors.
Citation: 2026 INSC 669
Case No.: Civil Appeal No. 10990 of 2016
Bench: Justices Manoj Misra and K.V. Viswanathan (judgment authored by Justice Manoj Misra)
Date of Judgment: July 6, 2026
Counsel for the Appellant: Ms. Radhika Gautam
Counsel for the Respondents: Mr. Rajesh Gupta