Oral gift must be strictly proved before women can be deprived of inheritance rights: SC

ISLAMABAD, Jul 01 (APP): The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that women cannot be deprived of their inheritance rights on the basis of an alleged oral gift unless the party claiming the gift proves all its essential legal ingredients through independent and reliable evidence.

According to the detailed judgment in the case of Noor Muhammad and others versus Ghulam Haider and others, the court held that revenue mutation entries, long possession of property or subsequent revenue proceedings, by themselves, do not constitute proof of an oral gift or ownership.

The two-member bench, comprising Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan and Justice Shakeel Ahmad, observed that the burden of proving an alleged oral gift rests on the party benefiting from it, particularly where the claim has the effect of depriving a widow and daughters of their Islamic and legal inheritance rights.

The court noted that there was no evidence on record to show that the female heirs had been informed that the alleged oral gift would permanently extinguish their ownership rights, or that they had knowingly and voluntarily relinquished those rights.

The judgment held that the lower courts had erred in treating a 1955 gift mutation as conclusive proof of an oral gift. It emphasized that, under the law, a mutation serves only fiscal and revenue purposes and neither creates nor extinguishes title to property.

The Supreme Court further ruled that subsequent land consolidation proceedings, exchanges of land, private partition arrangements or other revenue entries could not establish that a valid oral gift had actually taken place in 1955.

The court also held that long possession alone is insufficient to prove an oral gift, as the person in possession may already have been occupying the property in the capacity of a co-heir.

It reaffirmed the legal principle that possession by one co-heir is generally deemed to be possession on behalf of all co-heirs unless there is clear and unequivocal evidence that the rights of the other heirs have been expressly denied.

The judgment stressed that women’s inheritance rights enjoy special protection under both Islamic law and public policy. Referring to its earlier precedents, the Supreme Court observed that courts are duty-bound to closely scrutinize attempts to deprive women of inheritance through fabricated oral gifts, sham documents or manipulated revenue records, and such claims cannot be dismissed merely on the basis of delay or technical objections.

The court concluded that although limitation may be relevant in certain cases, the primary question is whether the alleged oral gift has been legally proved. If the gift itself is not established in accordance with law, women cannot be deprived of their inheritance rights solely on the basis of an old mutation, prolonged possession or subsequent revenue proceedings.