Bal Thackeray will case: HC cautions elder son against calling 'irrelevant' witnesses

The Bombay High Court has cautioned late Bal Thackeray's estranged son Jayadev against delaying hearing by summoning irrelevant witnesses in a will probation case of the Shiv Sena founder.

Jayadev and his younger brother Uddhav Thackeray, who took over as Sena chief after death of his father, are embroiled in litigation in the high court over the validity of Bal Thackeray's will.

Justice Gautam Patel reprimanded Jayadev and his lawyer on July 19 over their request to summon several journalists and editors heading the city bureau of some national and regional newspapers in the case.

The judge was hearing a suit filed by Jayadev questioning the veracity of his father's will.

Bal Thackeray had signed the will in December 2011 bequeathing most of the family property and assets to Uddhav Thackeray and his family.

However, Jayadev challenged it saying that his father was of an "unsound mind" at the time.

In support of his arguments, Jayadev's counsel Seema Sarnaik had submitted a list of 34 witnesses that he wished to be examined by court.

A majority of witnesses on the list were reporters, photographers and news editors who had written or published some articles on Bal Thackarey or his family around the time preceding his death.

Justice Patel had initially assented to Jayadev's request and summoned witnesses from the Hindustan Times and the Sena mouthpiece Saamana on previous hearings.

However, when Sarnaik expressed Jayadev's wish to summon some more editors on the last hearing on July 19, Justice Patel said he would not call any more journalists unless it was certain that their testimonies would help provide decisive evidence in the case.

"If the submission is that the testator (Bal Thackeray) was so very unwell that he could not, at the relevant time, have had sufficient fitness of purpose to make a testamentary writing, then that cannot possibly be proved by piling one newspaper article on top of another," he said.

"The plaintiff (Jayadev Thackeray) has already led the evidence of the testator's physician, Dr Jalil Parkar... It seems to me that no newspaper article can furnish direct evidence even remotely relevant to the issues that fall for determination in a testamentary suit propounding a will," the judge said.

On the question of testamentary capacity, when doctors are available and hospital records can be summoned, what a newspaper editor or journalist learnt or said or was told, and what a newspaper article says, lends no evidentiary weight or heft to the matter, he said.

"It does not prove a medical condition. The ailment or medical condition must be proved by direct evidence, not supposition," he said.

The court is currently conducting the cross- examination of witnesses on Jayadev Thackeray's side. His own cross-examination was completed earlier this month.

Justice Patel has now summoned some officials from the Lilavati Hospital, Bank of Maharashtra, MTNL, and Jayadev Thackeray's wife Anuradha.