The Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment on women’s inheritance rights, overturned a 71-year-old court decision and directed the relevant revenue authorities to give their mother and sisters their rightful share in the inherited property as per the law.
A two-member bench headed by Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan issued a 14-page written judgment on Noor Muhammad’s appeal. The court ruled that inheritance is not a favor from anyone but a Sharia and legal right of women which cannot be taken away on any pretext.
According to the court’s judgment, after the death of their father in 1955, two brothers claimed a verbal gift and transferred the entire property to their names, depriving their mother and sisters of the inheritance.
The Supreme Court said in a recent judgment that resorting to fake gifts, fictitious deaths, fraud, family pressure or outdated customs to deprive women of property is not acceptable. The court clarified that women’s inheritance rights are neither symbolic nor optional, but their implementation is the responsibility of the law.
The court further said that the onus of proving oral gift also lies with the party who wants to benefit from this claim, while the trial court, ignoring this principle, accepted the claim of gift contrary to the law as evidence, which was not the correct procedure.
The Supreme Court, while accepting the relevant appeal, declared all the decisions of the subordinate courts null and void and ordered the relevant revenue orders to immediately correct the inheritance records in accordance with the law.
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