The burden of proving the due execution and attestation of a Will rests on the person propounding the Will. The jurisdiction of a probate Court is not one of distrust or suspicion, and the judicial conscience must be satisfied that all suspicious circumstances have been explained and removed by a probate Petitioner.

1. The Plaintiffs seeks probate to a Will dated 4th July 1993 said to have been left by one Shashikala Baburao Alandkar(“Shashikala”). Shashikala died in tragic accident on 27th February 1994, succumbing to severe burn injuries. Shashikala was unmarried, and had no children. She was survived by the two branches of her brothers’ families. One of these branches is the family of Mahavir Baburao Alandkar. Mahavir had seven heirs.None of them have challenged this Petition. The other brother, Padmakar Baburao Alandkar, had a daughter Anuradha, who in turn has three children, Aseem, Ajay and Preeti. They oppose this probate petition; Anuradha is Shashikala’s niece, and the other three Defendants are her children. The 2nd Defendant filed the Affidavit in Support of the Caveat for himself and as the Constituted Attorney of the other Defendants.

2. I turn now to the Will in question. The Will has four pages. It is typewritten. There were two witnesses to this Will, one Mr. R. G. Shenai and Mr. G.V.P. Desai. Page 1 of the Will has the initials of the deceased and of two witnesses. Page 2 has the same initials, but there are also certain handwritten endorsements in blue fountain pen ink. Page 3 has the initials of all three persons, and an entire paragraph 11A has been added in blue fountain pen ink. On page four, we find the signatures of the deceased and the two witnesses. Each witness endorsed the date ‘4th July 1993’ below his signature and put his name and address. At the top of the page, the date “4th” is also handwritten. There was no dispute in the trial that the signature on page 4 and the initials at the previous pages are the deceased’s. There is also no dispute that the date “4th” was written by the deceased, or that the handwritten portions at pages 2 and 3 are in the writing of Mr. R. G. Shenai.

3. The Will appoints the two Plaintiffs as executors. Both are Advocates. The 1st Plaintiff is a solicitor of this Court. In clause 2, it contains directions for the funeral. In clause 4, Shashikala sets out that she owned a flat at Mahim and a motor car garage, a secondhand Ambassador motor car. She also claimed to own a temple. She listed some bank accounts and a bank locker. The four bank accounts listed were not in her sole name; they stood in her name jointly with other persons. The Bank of Baroda account was held by her with Mr. Damania and Mr. Pikale, the Plaintiffs; the Saraswat Cooperative Bank account had her name and that of one Peroze Ramchandra Devrukhkar; the account at the Janata Sahkari Bank, Girgaum was in her name and Devrukhkar’s; and the Canara Bank account was one she held Mr. Pikale, the 2nd Plaintiff. The Plaintiffs’ names also appear on the bank locker. In her Will, Shashikala said this was for convenience.

4. In Clause 6, Shashikala directed her executors to take possession of all her estates, to provide payments of all debts and to provide all the professional and legal expenses of the Plaintiffs for all the legal work that she said they had done for her for many years. In Clause 8, Shashikala noted the joint holdings to which I had earlier referred. In Clause 9, she gave her executors absolute discretion to sell or dispose of the flat, car and garage, set aside a small amount for the purposes of the management of the temple, and directed the two executors to act in consultation with each other.

5. Clause 11 contains the principal bequest. It is to one or more institutions looking after the welfare and shelter of old and aged persons. The clause gives the two executors complete authority not only in the selection of the recipient institutions, but also in deciding the amounts for distribution.

6. There is then the handwritten clause 11A under which a bequest of Rs. 1 lakh is made to. Devrukhkar and the Ambassador car is left to one Mr. Krishna Balu Dhanawade. I understand that Mr. Dhanawade was her c