A Will, an odd timeline and A ‘Digital Ghost’

Mumbai, Dec 05

The Delhi High Court on Thursday continued its detailed scrutiny of the disputed Will of late industrialist Sanjay Kapur, with the proceedings throwing up multiple legal and evidentiary gaps that could weigh heavily against its credibility. Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Karisma Kapoor’s children, urged that the document be tested strictly against statutory requirements, particularly since it allegedly sidelines natural heirs, including minors. The hearing repeatedly returned to one core theme: whether the document placed before the Court can be accepted as a lawful, voluntary and duly proved testament, rather than a mere paper assertion of last wishes.

Jethmalani described Sanjay Kapur as a “digital ghost” in relation to the Will, pointing out that there is no email, message, instruction or confirmation from Sunjay Kapur that links him to the drafting or approval of the document. Even the WhatsApp chats cited by the propounders do not feature any direct participation by Sunjay Kapur. The absence of any contemporaneous digital trail from a sophisticated businessman is fundamentally inconsistent with the claim that this was a carefully considered estate plan.

Further, no one has certified the digital records properly as required under Section 63 of the Indian Evidence Act. There is no certification for the phones belonging to Sunjay, Priya, or Dinesh, despite their phones being central to the WhatsApp chat. Therefore, the WhatsApp messages should not even be considered as evidence.

The Will is stated to be of March 2025, a period when Kapur was described as healthy, professionally active and financially secure, with no medical crisis or external pressure reflected on record. Counsel invited the Court to consider why such a drastic shift in testamentary intent would occur abruptly when structured trust arrangements for his children allegedly already existed, and there was no documented trigger for rewriting his succession plan. This “sudden” timing, unaccompanied by any explanation or supporting material, adds to the cloud of suspicion.

A central plank of challenge was the alleged non‑compliance with the statutory requirement of attestation. Neither of the two attesting witnesses has stated that the other was present at the time of execution, even though the law mandates that both must witness the testator sign, or receive his acknowledgment of signature, in each other’s presence. This omission was is a fundamental defect that strikes at the root of valid execution, going beyond mere technicality to the heart of whether the Will can at all be treated as proved.

Serious doubt has to be cast on the chain of custody of the original Will, including who held it immediately after Kapur’s death, where it was kept, and how it eventually surfaced. The absence of a clear, documented sequence of custody, especially in a high‑value estate, is a major red flag that undermines confidence in the document’s integrity and opens the door to allegations of interpolation or substitution.

The text of the Will refers to execution at Gurugram (Gurgaon), yet the attesting affidavits do not affirm this location or provide a consistent narrative of where the signing actually took place. Neither witness specifies the exact time of execution, an omission that is particularly significant given the proximity of the Will’s date to later events in Kapur’s life and the overall context of the dispute. These internal inconsistencies are a classic case of “suspicious circumstances” in testamentary law.

Payments made towards children’s fees and living expenses stem from binding Supreme Court directions in earlier matrimonial proceedings, rather than from any voluntary largesse. The compliance with court‑mandated obligations cannot be re‑packaged as discretionary generosity, nor can it justify a Will that substantially dilutes the children’s inheritance rights.

The succession law treats the unexplained exclusion of natural heirs—particularly minor children—with heightened suspicion and demands a higher degree of satisfaction on proof. No contemporaneous note, correspondence or record has been produced to show why Sunjay Kapur would consciously depart from his publicly recorded concern for all his children and structure a Will that appears to prioritise others over his own biological heirs.