RAM GOPAL LAL Vs. AIPNA KUNWAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) ON March 3, X915, Babu Bijai Singh died, and on September 13, 1915, his widow, who is the present respondent, applied, through Baj Bahadur Singh, as her attorney, for the grant of probate of a document dated January 25, 1915, which purported to be the last will of her deceased husband.

(2.) OBJECTION was taken to the grant by the appellant, one of the male agnatic relations of the deceased and one of his reversioners in the event of intestacy, on the ground that the will put forward was never executed by the deceased but was a fabrication and a forgery. The learned District Judge before whom this issue was heard decided in favour of the appellant. His judgment was reversed by the High Court at Allahabad, exercising appellate jurisdiction, and hence the present appeal.

(3.) THE deceased resided in the village of Nizamabad, in the District of Azamgarh. He was about seventy-four years of age at the time of his death, and had for some short time previously been in weak health and afflicted with paralysis. His male agnatic relations who in the event of intestacy would inherit his property, subject to the widow's estate, lived with him in the same compound. He had no children, and his other relations were the four sons of his sister, one of whom was Baj Bahadur Singh, who had for some twenty-four years before the testator's death kept a druggist's shop at Lucknow. The earliest piece of evidence bearing upon the present dispute is that of a man called Rameshar Prasad, who is headmaster of a school at Hardoi. He stated that at a date which the High Court fixed at the end of December, 1914, though the witness himself does not specify the exact time, he was informed orally by a man named Babu Manohar Lal, who was not called as a witness, that Babu Bijai Singh wanted to start a school to teach English, Hindi, and mathematics, and asked witness to prepare a scheme. This he did, and sent it to the deceased, who appears to have acknowledged it, but nothing further took place. The bearing of this evidence upon the dispute is due to the fact that the document under consideration expresses a desire to establish such a school and makes provision for its expenses; but this amounts to no more than that a portion of the will complied with what appears to have been a former wish of the deceased, a wish which may well have been known to the people who put forward the document. There is no further evidence at all with regard to the matter until the date when the will was prepared and purports to have been executed. The drawing up of the document was undoubtedly done by one Ram Ratan Lal, and his evidence is that it was prepared on January 25. It is stated, however, that it was executed on the following day--the 26th--and it purports to bear the signature of the deceased affixed in the presence of seven witnesses. It is a will of substantial length. It contains no reference whatever to the male agnatic relations of the deceased, but begins by a eulogy of his sister's sons. It then provides that a 12-anna share in mauza Khairauti, yielding Rs. 500 a year after payment of the Government revenue, should be dedicated "for meeting the religious expenses incurred in connection with Bari Sanghat situate at Nizamabad, Durbar of Sri Harmandirji situate in the city of Patna, and Bari Sanghat Risham Katra situate in the city of Benares, and the temple at Nizamabad which has been built by my paternal grandmother." The next provision is for the expenses of a school where education is to be given in English, in the vernacular of the Province, and in Gurmukhi, by dedicating to this object a mauza yielding a profit of Rs. 1200 a year. It then declares that the rest of the property should remain in the possession of the widow, with a direction that she should keep any of the nephews--meaning, no doubt, those already named--on whom she relies to look after her and the property--and give him one-fourth of the property for his services, the remaining property after her death to be divided equally among the other three nephews, and it concludes with a very specific and detailed account of fifteen items of property. Ram Ratan Lal alleges that no draft was ever made of this will, but that it was dictated to him by the deceased at one interview beginning at 4 o'clock on January 25, in the presence of Kali Charan and Jageshar, whose names appear as witnesses. There is no erasure or alteration of any kind from beginning to end of the whole document. This is in itself a remarkable fact--that a man stricken with illness as the deceased was, should have been able to dictate in clear, logical, and even legal form, a complete and consecutive account of all his wishes, divided into separate paragraphs, including a specific enumeration of his whole estate, without one single error from beginning to end, is a matter which arrests attention and provokes comment. The proceedings that follow show, in their Lordships' mind, quite clearly that that comment is only too well justified.