Keshav and Others vs. Gian Chand and Another
Background
An elderly, illiterate, childless woman named Hardei died in 1991, owning land that both her nephew Keshav (her sister's son, who lived with and cared for her) and Gian Chand (her brother's son) claimed rights to. Gian Chand and another relative sued in 1991 claiming Hardei had gifted them the land via a 1985 deed, while Keshav argued he had long been a tenant in occupation and that Hardei herself had denied executing any gift deed before revenue authorities in 1989. The trial court and first appellate court both dismissed the gift-deed claim as fabricated after weighing the evidence, but the High Court's second appeal reversed those concurrent findings, reasoning that a registered gift deed carries a presumption of validity and reinstating the plaintiffs' claim.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court restored the trial court and first appellate court's findings, holding that the High Court had wrongly focused only on whether the gift deed's registration formalities were satisfied, while ignoring the deeper factual question of whether Hardei had voluntarily and knowingly executed it at all. It highlighted strong contrary evidence: Hardei had lived with and depended on Keshav who cared for her, she had explicitly denied the gift deed's execution before revenue authorities years before her death, the deed sat unused for years without any mutation application, and there was no plausible reason she would have given away her only asset to relatives she did not live with. The Court reiterated that when an elderly, illiterate, or infirm person's document is challenged, the person benefiting from it bears the burden of proving it was executed with full understanding and free will, a burden the plaintiffs failed to meet, and that a second appeal cannot lightly overturn concurrent factual findings of two lower courts unless they are perverse, which was not the case here.
Lesson Learnt
A registered gift deed is not automatically valid just because it is properly signed and registered. When the person who supposedly gave the property is elderly, illiterate, or vulnerable, courts require clear proof that the gift was made knowingly and voluntarily, and prior denials of the transaction by that person carry significant weight.