Daughters can’t inherit father’s property before 1956, HC clarifies

MUMBAI: In a landmark ruling, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday clarified the inheritance rights under Hindu law, concluding that daughters have no claim to their father’s property if he died before the Hindu Succession Act was enacted in 1956. The case provides legal clarity on the question of whether daughters held inheritance rights prior to 1956, especially when the deceased was succeeded by a wife.
The case was filed by Radhabai Shirke, who sought a share in her father Yeshwantrao’s property. Yeshwantrao, who died in 1952, had two wives: Laxmibai, with whom he had two daughters, Sonubai and Radhabai; and Bhikubai, with whom he had a daughter named Champubai. Laxmibai predeceased Yeshwantrao, in 1930. After his death, Bhikubai continued to reside on the property before she died in 1973, leaving a will in favor of her daughter, Champubai. Radhabai, however, argued for her right to a half-share of the property and filed for partition. The trial court, and later an appellate court, dismissed her claim, ruling that Bhikubai was the sole inheritor under the Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act, 1937. Radhabai then appealed in the high court.
During the appeal, Radhabai’s counsel contended that his client should be entitled to a share of her father’s property based on interpretations of Hindu law that might allow daughters to inherit alongside a surviving widow. Citing earlier judgments, her counsel argued that inheritance rights for daughters could be recognised even in cases predating the Hindu Succession Act of 1956.
On behalf of Bhikubai’s heirs, however, counsel argued that the 1937 Act provided inheritance rights solely to widows, not daughters. They maintained that before 1956, daughters were not considered coparceners in Hindu law, which meant they had no legal right to inherit property if a widow was alive. Additionally, they argued that neither the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, nor its 2005 amendment, which granted daughters equal inheritance rights, could be applied retrospectively to cases where succession opened before 1956.
A division bench of Justices A S Chandurkar and Jitendra Jain upheld the previous rulings against Radhabai, stating that because her father had died before the enactment of the Hindu Succession Act, she did not have inheritance rights to his property. The court emphasised that the 1937 Act was intended to provide only limited rights to widows, granting them a “Hindu Woman’s Estate” with constrained control, while explicitly omitting daughters. The term “son” was specifically used in the 1937 Act, indicating the legislative intent to restrict inheritance rights to sons when a widow survived the father.
The high court further stated that inheritance rights were “frozen” at the time of Yeshwantrao’s death, meaning that the laws in place at the time governed the case. Consequently, the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, which granted inheritance rights to daughters, could not be applied retrospectively to succession cases dating to before the Act’s enactment.