A high-octane legal battle over the will of late industrialist Sunjay Kapur continued on Wednesday — with fresh details surfacing before the Delhi High Court. The civil suit filed by his children (with actor Karisma Kapoor) contends that the document was digitally fabricated to divert the entire Rs 30,000-crore estate to his third wife. Lawyers for Priya Kapur however insisted that the case had no legal basis because they had not formally challenged the contentious will.
Senior Advocate Rajiv Nayar argued that there was no valid legal challenge to the will of Sunjay Kapur — insisting that the entire plaint was bereft of any cause of action. He reiterated several known details about the case to underscore his point and reminded that the plaintiffs had known about the Will for more than a month before filing a lawsuit. The argument however drew sharp rebuke from Justice Jyoti Singh — who noted that they had only heard the will being read out and did not know its exact contents until after filing the case.
“I am assuming this to be probate proceedings. After 45 years, I am told that there are four additional grounds to invalidate a will — wrong spelling, wrong address, writing testatrix instead of testator and closeness of witnesses. I ask myself, in the entire experience of our ladyship, both as a lawyer and a judge, is this the requirement of proof in a probate case that a will will be invalidated on any of these grounds…I ask myself in which proceeding are we putting the Will to issue? This is not a probate proceeding. You have not challenged the execution or validity of the Will in the pleadings. There is no declaration sought for cancelling it,” the counsel insisted.
‘Priya Kapur is a banker’
Nayar insisted that he had never seen a Will being invalidated for spelling errors. He went on to argue that minor errors could not invalidate a validly executed will, stating that the only relevant questions were whether the deceased was of sound mind and whether the will was executed in the presence of two attesting witnesses.
“Forgery has to be complete no mistakes would be left. And this lady (Priya Kapur) is not a housewife; she is an investment banker. Would she spell her son’s name wrong? A will is not judged by whose custody it remained in or when it surfaced, but by whether it bears genuine signatures and proper attestation…This is wife versus wife — obviously, the current wife would be preferred, not the estranged one…” he added.
“All they keep saying is: ‘Sunjay would not have done it’ … ‘he was on a holiday’ … ‘he could not disinherit his children’. But I will show you why he disinherited Karisma’s kids. It is because he provided sufficiently for them under the trust. When they accepted shares from the trust, they did not shed a tear for Rani Kapur (Sunjay Kapur’s mother, who has also accused Priya Kapur of trying to seize complete control of the fortune),” an NDTV report quoted the lawyer as saying.