Andhra Pradesh HC Dismisses Second Appeal, Upholds Registered Will Over Unregistered Rival Will Clouded by Suspicious Circumstances

The Andhra Pradesh High Court confirmed title in favour of the plaintiffs, finding the defendants' unregistered Will of 1991 riddled with suspicious circumstances and not proved in law.

A property dispute stretching back to a suit filed in 2000 reached its conclusion on 15 June 2026, when Justice V. Gopala Krishna Rao of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh at Amaravati dismissed Second Appeal No. 494 of 2016. The appeal was filed by the defendants in O.S.No. 59 of 2000 after the III Additional District Judge, East Godavari District at Kakinada, reversed the trial court's dismissal of the suit and declared title in favour of the plaintiffs. At the heart of the dispute were two competing Wills executed by the same testatrix, Pamarthi Subbayamma: a registered Will dated 31.08.1990 bequeathing the plaint schedule house property to her younger brother Saladi Hanumantha Rao, and an unregistered Will dated 29.12.1991 allegedly bequeathing the same property to the defendants' branch. The High Court found the unregistered Will wholly unreliable and the registered Will duly proved.

The Dispute Before the High Court

The plaintiffs — the sons, daughters, and wife of the late Saladi Hanumantha Rao — filed O.S.No. 59 of 2000 before the II Additional Senior Civil Judge, Kakinada, seeking declaration of title over the plaint schedule house property and recovery of possession, along with damages.

Their case was that Pamarthi Subbayamma, the natural sister of Hanumantha Rao, had purchased the site under a registered sale deed dated 14.02.1962 and constructed the house with her own funds from savings derived from agricultural produce. She executed a registered Will dated 31.08.1990 bequeathing the property to Hanumantha Rao. Subbayamma died on 24.10.1993, and Hanumantha Rao subsequently died intestate, leaving the plaintiffs as his legal heirs.

The defendants — the wife and sons of late Saladi Gangaraju, and the wife and children of late Saladi Parthasaradhi, both brothers of Subbayamma — contested the suit on three grounds. They claimed the property was purchased in Subbayamma's name as a benami transaction using funds contributed by Gangaraju and Parthasaradhi. They also claimed title by adverse possession. And they relied on an unregistered Will dated 29.12.1991 (Ex.B-1), under which Subbayamma allegedly bequeathed the southern portion to Parthasaradhi and the northern portion to Annapurnamma, wife of Gangaraju. The defendants also produced an earlier registered Will dated 18.04.1983 (Ex.B-2), attested by Subbayamma's husband, under which she had allegedly bequeathed the property to Gangaraju and Parthasaradhi.

The trial court dismissed the suit. The first appellate court reversed that finding and decreed the suit in favour of the plaintiffs. The defendants then approached the High Court under Section 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

Substantial Questions of Law Framed

At the time of admission on 29.08.2025, the High Court framed three substantial questions of law: whether the first appellate court erred in ignoring Ex.B-2, the registered Will attested by Subbayamma's husband; whether the first appellate court erred in not finding that the plaintiffs had failed to remove suspicious circumstances surrounding Ex.A-2; and whether the first appellate court erred in not considering the recitals in Ex.B-2.

After hearing Senior Counsel Sri O. Manohar Reddy for the appellants and Sri Kirthi Teja Kondaveeti for the respondents, the Court concluded that none of these questions in fact survived for determination once the evidence was properly assessed.

Why the Unregistered Will Failed

The Court's analysis of Ex.B-1, the unregistered Will of 29.12.1991, identified a cluster of circumstances that made its execution highly doubtful.

The Will was executed at the house of Parthasaradhi, who was himself one of the beneficiaries under it. D.W.1, who gave evidence for the defendants, was the son of Gangaraju — another legatee under Ex.B-1. D.W.2, the only attestor examined, admitted he was a close relative of the beneficiaries. The defendants did not examine the second attestor to Ex.B-1, though they did examine the scribe as D.W.3. The Court held that the evidence of a scribe cannot be equated with the evidence of an attestor for the purpose of proving a Will under Section 68 of the Indian Evidence Act.

The Court found it significant that from 1990 onwards, Subbayamma and the defendants' branch were embroiled in active civil litigation. Subbayamma had filed O.S.No. 72 of 1990 against D.W.1 and others, and D.W.1 had filed O.S.No. 34 of 1990 against Subbayamma. D.W.1 himself admitted in cross-examination that he and Subbayamma were not on good terms after the filing of O.S.No. 134 of 1990. There was also evidence that Parthasaradhi and Subbayamma had no talking terms from 1990 until her death in 1993. Against this backdrop, the Court found it implausible that Subbayamma would execute a Will in 1991 in favour of those she was actively litigating against.

A further circumstance weighed heavily. D.W.1 filed a counter dated 27.09.1994 in the legal representatives' application in O.S.No. 72 of 1990, yet that counter made no reference whatsoever to Ex.B-1, the unregistered Will of 1991 that allegedly favoured his own family. The Court treated this omission as a strong suspicious circumstance.

Even D.W.2's own account placed the execution of Ex.B-1 at Parthasaradhi's house, in the presence of Parthasaradhi and D.W.1 — both beneficiaries. The Court applied the settled principle that suspicious circumstances must be “real, germane and valid and not merely the fantasy of the doubting mind,” and found that the circumstances here were precisely of that real and germane character. Relying on Lalitaben Jayantilal Popat v. Pragnaben Jamnadas Kantara (2008) 15 SCC 365, H. Venkatachala Iyengar v. B.N. Thimmajamma AIR 1959 SC 443, and Smt. Jaswant Kaur v. Amrit Kaur (1977) 1 SCC 369, the Court held that the defendants had failed to discharge the burden of removing the suspicious circumstances surrounding Ex.B-1 and that the Will was not proved in accordance with law.

Why the Registered Will Was Accepted

The plaintiffs relied on Ex.A-2, the registered Will dated 31.08.1990. Both attestors were examined: P.W.2 as the second attestor and first identifying witness, and P.W.3 as the first attestor and second identifying witness before the Sub-Registrar.

The appellants objected that P.W.2 was a son of the beneficiary and himself a plaintiff, making his evidence suspect. The Court acknowledged this but found the evidence of P.W.3 independently sufficient. P.W.3 was not a close relative of the beneficiary. He deposed that the scribe read the Will to Subbayamma, she admitted its contents, and then affixed her thumb mark. He confirmed she was in a sound and disposing state of mind and executed the Will voluntarily.

The appellants argued that Subbayamma was a signatory but had affixed only a thumb mark on Ex.A-2, raising suspicion. The Court rejected this. The plaintiffs produced Ex.A-17 and Ex.A-18, registered documents from the same period, both bearing Subbayamma's thumb mark. They also produced the plaint in O.S.No. 72 of 1990 and served suit summons in O.S.No. 34 of 1990 — public documents — all bearing only her thumb impression. The Court held that these documents established that Subbayamma, due to old age, habitually affixed her thumb mark rather than her signature during that period. Since no objection to the admissibility of Ex.A-10 and Ex.A-16 had been raised before the trial court, the defendants could not challenge their admissibility at the appellate stage.

On the question of whether Ex.A-2 was revoked by the later Ex.B-1, the Court held that since Ex.B-1 was not proved, the question did not arise. It also addressed the argument about Ex.B-2, the 1983 registered Will, noting that Ex.A-2 dated 31.08.1990 was the later and last testament of Subbayamma. The Court held that it is not mandatory for a Will to contain an express recital cancelling earlier Wills, and that under law the latest Will prevails.

The Court also noted that Subbayamma lived in Hanumantha Rao's house until her death on 24.10.1993, a fact admitted even by D.W.1 and D.W.2. Hanumantha Rao attended and performed all of Subbayamma's funeral ceremonies; the defendants' branch did not attend. No suggestion to the contrary was put to P.W.2 in cross-examination.

The Three Inconsistent Pleas

The Court took note of the defendants' three mutually inconsistent positions. They claimed the property was purchased in Subbayamma's name as a benami transaction; they claimed title by adverse possession; and they claimed under Ex.B-1 unregistered Will. The Court observed that if the property was genuinely purchased with the defendants' funds as a benami, there would be no occasion for Subbayamma to execute a Will distributing it. All three pleas failed on the evidence.

Scope of Interference Under Section 100 CPC

The Court reiterated the settled position on the scope of a second appeal. Citing Bhagwan Sharma v. Bani Ghosh AIR 1993 SC 398 and Kondira Dagadu Kadam v. Savitribai Sopan Gujar AIR 1999 SC 471, it held that the High Court cannot substitute its opinion for that of the first appellate court unless the findings are contrary to mandatory provisions of law, settled legal positions, or are based on inadmissible evidence or arrived at without evidence. Having examined the record, the Court was satisfied that the first appellate court's findings were neither erroneous nor legally vitiated. The substantial questions of law framed at admission did not, on analysis, survive for determination.

Order

The second appeal was dismissed, confirming the judgment and decree of the III Additional District Judge, East Godavari District at Kakinada in A.S.No. 94 of 2006. Pending applications, if any, were closed. Each party was directed to bear its own costs in the second appeal.