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Kasabai Tukaram Karvar & Ors. vs Nivruti (Dead) Thr. LRs. & Ors.

Civil Appeal · 2022 INSC 733Decided 20 Jul 2022
Civil Appeal No. 6076 of 2010
K.M. Joseph · Hrishikesh Roy

Background

A family's patriarch, Kushaba, died in 1948, having married three times; his third wife's daughter, Kasabai, was born just ten days after his death. Kushaba's widow later adopted a son, Nivrutti, in 1949. Kasabai filed a partition suit claiming a half share in the family's properties as a daughter, and the trial court and first appellate court agreed that she and the adopted son should each get half. The High Court, however, reversed this in a second appeal, holding that the adoption legally related back to the father's death in 1948, making the adopted son the sole heir. Kasabai's heirs then appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court upheld the High Court's ruling and dismissed the appeal. It reaffirmed the settled Hindu law principle that when a widow validly adopts a son, the adoption is treated in law as having taken effect from the moment of the natural father's death (the "doctrine of relation back"), making the adopted son the notional sole coparcener from that date onward. Relying on precedent (Govind Hanumantha Rao Desai and Shripad Gajanan Suthankar) and Mulla's Hindu Law, the Court held that where a son (including an adopted son via relation back) exists, a daughter does not inherit simultaneously with him under the pre-1956 Bombay School of Mitakshara law: daughters only inherited in the total absence of a son. Since this succession opened in 1948, before the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, the modern law giving daughters coparcenary rights did not apply, and the adopted son's rights excluded the daughter, including any share flowing from the mother's remarriage.

Lesson Learnt

Under pre-1956 Hindu succession law, a validly adopted son's rights are treated as dating back to the natural father's death, which can override and exclude a daughter's inheritance claim: a stark reminder that succession disputes involving adoptions or events before 1956 are governed by very different rules than modern Hindu Succession Act principles, which now give daughters equal coparcenary status.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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