Arundhati Roy

New Delhi, May 5: The Supreme Court has thrown out a plea by a man who sought a review of an over two-decade-old judgment in which it had allowed Christian women equal succession rights over property.

“Why after so many years?” Justices Deepak Verma and Ibrajim Kalifulla observed yesterday, dismissing the plea to review the February 1986 verdict.

On February 24, 1986, Mary Roy, mother of activist-writer Arundhati Roy, had won a legal battle for equal rights over the property of her father, a Syrian Catholic.

The top court had then held that the Indian Succession Act, 1925 — which recognised equal succession rights for daughters and sons — would apply to Christians in Travancore and Cochin (now Kochi) as well.

Before that, Christians of these areas used to be governed by the Travancore Christian Succession Act, 1092, and the Cochin Christian Succession Act, 1097.

Under the Travancore act, a widow who returned to her parental home, could enjoy ancestral property till she died or remarried.

The act also said that if a man did not leave behind a will specifying a share of his personal property for a daughter, the daughter — unlike her brother — wouldn’t be entitled to a share of that property. But she would be entitled to one-fourth of the value of the share of the son or Rs 5,000, whichever was less.

She wouldn’t get even this amount if she had been provided with stridhanom or promised it at the time of marriage.

Mary Roy, from Travancore, the southern part of modern-day Kerala, had challenged certain provisions of the Travancore Christian Succession Act as violative of Articles 14 and 15(1) of the Constitution.

Her father had died intestate (without a will) in November 1959. Roy, who had another married sister and two brothers, went to court for a share in the property and won the legal battle.

In 1986, the Supreme Court did not only rule that the provisions of the Indian Succession Act would henceforth apply to the community, it also clarified that it would apply to earlier property settlements, too.

Almost 24 years later in 2010, a Syrian Catholic filed a review petition against the judgment. He claimed that though under the customary law, his father had given a “lion’s portion of his assets” as “stridhanom” to his sisters when they got married in 1978, they were seeking a share of his father’s property after his death in 1995.

C.J. Simon, then 65, from Kottayam district of Kerala, said the Supreme Court ruling did not apply to all Christians in India.

Even in Kerala, he said, the Vaniya Christians of Chittorr Taluk of the erstwhile Cochin state are still governed by their customary law, that is the Hindu Mitakshara law.

The members of the Anglo-Indian community and the Parangi communities of Cochin are also outside the purview of the Indian Succession Act, he said, and sought a similar exemption for Christians of Travancore and Cochin.

He argued that his family had been following the customary law prevailing in the Syrian Catholic community of Kerala where unmarried daughters are entitled to stridhanom at the time of their marriage. Hence, he and his community should be exempted from the purview of the Indian Succession Act.

He also objected to the retrospective operation of the judgment in the Mary Roy case, saying it “has and will unsettle certain intestate succession of properties” among Christians in these former states and “subsequent transactions” of such properties.

But the two-judge bench rejected his plea for a review.

While a review is usually placed before the same bench, in this case it was heard by a different bench as the judges who had given the 1986 verdict have since retired.

Simon’s lawyer said he would file a curative petition, which has to be placed before a five-judge bench.