Hyderabad: Telangana high court has held that it is the legal duty of a deceased person’s widow and children to pay back his debt. They cannot escape from the statutory obligation of satisfying the debt contracted by the deceased and that shares of the property, owned by the family, can also be used to settle that debt, high court has said in a recent order.Justice Laxmi Narayana A of Telangana high court held that the legal heirs cannot avoid liability to discharge the deceased’s lawful debts merely because the property in question was ancestral and ruled that the recovery proceedings initiated by the revenue authorities under the Revenue Recovery Act were legally sustainable.Justice Narayana passed the verdict while dismissing petitions filed by a woman challenging the attachment and proposed auction of her family’s ancestral agricultural land of around two acres at Jalalpur village, Nagireddypet mandal, Kamareddy district, to recover Rs 15.71 lakh allegedly misappropriated by her late husband while serving as a postmaster under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS).The petitioner contended that her husband inherited the agricultural land from his ancestors and, after his death in 2010, devolved upon her and their two sons.She argued that only her husband’s share in the ancestral property could be proceeded against and not the undivided shares of the other legal heirs. She also maintained that she had no knowledge of the alleged misappropriation and that the family possessed no other property.The petitioner further claimed that despite producing old revenue records to establish the ancestral nature of the land, the district collector failed to properly consider her representation before directing recovery proceedings. During the pendency of the case, the revenue authorities also issued a distraint order (the act of seizing or holding someone’s property as security or as a penalty to obtain payment for a debt) proposing a public auction of the property, prompting the second writ petition.Opposing the pleas, the state contended that the petitioner’s husband misappropriated Rs 14.89 lakh of govt funds, the irregularity was established during an inquiry, and the amount was recoverable as arrears of land revenue after following the prescribed legal procedure. Govt also argued that the petitioner had no valid legal ground to prevent recovery.The court observed that while the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, abolished the doctrine of “pious obligation”, legal heirs remain liable to satisfy the debts of a deceased ancestor to the extent of the property inherited by them.It clarified that although legal heirs cannot be compelled to pay such debts from their personal assets, inherited or joint family property could still be proceeded against for recovery of lawful debt.The court noted that the petitioner herself consistently maintained that the land was ancestral property and had not claimed that the debt was incurred for any immoral purpose. In such circumstances, it held that the contention that recovery should be restricted only to the deceased’s share in the property was untenable.Finding no illegality in the recovery proceedings initiated by the revenue authorities, the judge dismissed both petitions.
