Disqualifications from Succession (Sections 24–28)

Sections 24 to 28 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 collect, in five short sections, every statutory bar that prevents an otherwise eligible heir from taking the property of a Hindu intestate. The architecture is austere: identify the disqualified heir, treat that heir as if she had died before the intestate, and let the rest of the Class I, Class II, agnate and cognate scheme run unchanged. The disqualifications are exhaustive — the old Hindu-law catalogue of bodily defects, congenital insanity, leprosy, want of limb, unchastity and loss of caste has been swept away by Section 28 and by parallel reform legislation that preceded the Code.

For the exam aspirant the chapter is small, but it is dense with traps. Section 24 has been repealed, yet old textbooks and pre-2005 question banks continue to ask about it. Section 25 disqualifies a murderer in a sense wider than Section 300 of the Indian Penal Code. Section 26 disqualifies the convert's descendants, not the convert herself. Section 27 supplies the legal fiction that does the heavy lifting throughout the Act. Section 28 reverses centuries of shastric exclusion. Each provision must be carried into the larger devolutionary scheme spelt out in the general rules of succession in the case of males and the general rules of succession in the case of females.

Statutory anchor and architectural place

Sections 18 to 23 of the Act lay down the general rules of succession; Sections 24 to 28 collect the disqualifications; Section 29 deals with escheat. The disqualification block is supplementary — it operates before the rules of distribution kick in. The order is: identify the heirs by class and order under Sections 8 to 13 (males) or Sections 15 and 16 (females); test each heir against the Section 24 to 28 filter; treat any heir who fails the filter as predeceased by force of Section 27; then run the per-stirpes calculation on the surviving branches.

Two features set the scheme apart from older Hindu law. First, the disqualifications are statutory and exhaustive. The pre-Act catalogue — unchastity, congenital blindness, deafness, dumbness, want of limb, idiocy, lunacy, change of religion, illegitimacy in non-Sudra cases — ceased to operate on the date the Code came into force. Second, the disqualification is personal. It does not extend, of its own force, to the legitimate issue of the disqualified heir. The descendants of the murderer take through the intestate directly, not through the disqualified parent. The exception is Section 26, where the bar runs precisely against descendants, but only those born after the conversion who are themselves non-Hindus when the succession opens.

Section 24 — Repealed by the 2005 Amendment

Section 24 of the Hindu Succession Act has been deleted. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 39 of 2005 omitted the section with effect from 9 September 2005. After that date there is no statutory disqualification on remarriage at all. The chapter still appears in older textbooks and the legacy MCQ banks built on them, which is why it remains a high-value trap for the judiciary aspirant. Treat Section 24 as stale law: useful for context, fatal if you state it as the current rule.

The pre-2005 rule named three widows: the son's widow, the son's son's widow, and the brother's widow. Their remarriage before the succession opened disentitled them. The widow of the propositus (the deceased male himself) was always outside Section 24 — her remarriage after the succession had opened could not divest her, because she took as a Class I heir absolutely under Section 8 read with Section 14(1). Whether the prior marriage was void or voidable matters too: a marriage that is void under Section 11 HMA creates no widow at all; the wife of an annulled voidable marriage under Section 12 HMA stands on a different footing. Other female heirs — mother, daughter, daughter's daughter — were never within Section 24 either; their remarriage or unchastity was no bar then and is no bar now.

The 2005 deletion brought the Act into line with two longer policy currents: the repeal of the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 in 1983, and the constitutional difficulty in treating widows differently from widowers in their right to inherit. After 9 September 2005, the three widows once named in Section 24 take their share alongside other heirs irrespective of remarriage. The post-amendment position has been judicially noticed in the lower courts and assumed without further argument by the High Courts.

Exam angle. Three traps recur: (i) candidates name Section 24 as live law — wrong post-2005; (ii) candidates extend Section 24 to the widow of the propositus — wrong, she was never inside the section; (iii) candidates treat the deletion as retrospective such that successions that opened before 9 September 2005 must be reopened — wrong, the deletion operates only from the date of the amending Act.

Section 25 — Murderer disqualified

Section 25 disqualifies the murderer from two distinct categories of property. First, the property of the person murdered. Second, any other property the succession to which is furthered by the murder — that is, where the murder accelerates an inheritance the murderer would not otherwise have taken or would have taken later. The classic illustration: A is the maternal grandfather of his daughter D and her son DS. In D's lifetime DS cannot inherit from A because D, a Class I heir, would take. If DS murders D so that the line of intermediate Class I heirs through her is shortened, DS is disqualified under the second limb — not because he murdered A (he did not) but because he murdered D in furtherance of the succession to A's estate.

The wider sense of “murder”

The Legislature uses “murder” not in the technical sense of Section 300 of the Indian Penal Code but in a wider, popular sense. Culpable homicide not amounting to murder, conviction under Section 304 IPC, and even an acquittal of the principal charge accompanied by a conviction on a lesser violent count, can attract the bar. In N. Sitaramaiah v. Ramakrishnaiah, the accused had participated in a fatal attack along with co-accused who were convicted of murder; he was given the benefit of doubt on Section 302 but convicted under Section 324 IPC. The Court held the disqualification still attracted: the moral and policy basis of Section 25 does not turn on the niceties of mens rea calibration in the IPC.

Civil disqualification operates independently

The civil court adjudicating the inheritance is not bound by the criminal court's verdict. Where the criminal court has acquitted, the civil court may still hold that the heir caused the death and disqualify her on the civil-law standard of preponderance of probabilities. Where the criminal court has convicted, the civil court will ordinarily follow the conviction but is not estopped from receiving further evidence. In G.S. Sadashiva v. M.C. Srinivasan, the husband was prosecuted for the murder of his wife; the criminal court accepted that the wife had committed suicide while suffering from schizophrenia. In the civil suit, no further material was placed to displace the suicide finding, and the husband took her estate. The lesson is not that criminal acquittal bars Section 25 — it does not — but that without independent civil-court material to the contrary, the criminal-court finding will usually carry the day.

In Sarita C. v. Chetan C., a widow was prosecuted for the murder of her husband and was clearly acquitted. The civil court held she was entitled to inherit, declining to reopen the criminal court's clear finding. The asymmetry is sharp: a clear acquittal followed by no further civil material favours the heir; an acquittal on benefit of doubt followed by even modest civil material the other way may go against her.

Public-policy foundation

Section 25 is the statutory expression of an older equitable rule. The maxim is nemo ex suo delicto meliorem suam conditionem facere potest — no one may improve his condition by his own wrong. The Privy Council had applied that maxim to Hindu succession well before the 1956 Code in Kenchava v. Girimallappa, holding that a murderer was excluded from inheriting from his victim as a paramount rule of public policy independent of any statutory text. Section 25 codifies that rule, but the equitable principle continues to inform its construction. Even in testamentary succession — where Section 25 does not technically apply — the equitable rule has been carried over to disqualify a beneficiary who has murdered the testator.

Wife of the murderer takes nothing through him

The reach of Section 25 was tested in Vellikannu v. R. Singaperumal, where the Supreme Court considered whether the widow of a coparcener-son who had murdered his father could claim the murdered father's estate as Class I heir through her husband. The Court held she could not. Section 27, read with Section 25, treats the murderer-son as if he had predeceased his father; he had no estate of his father to transmit; his widow, claiming purely through him, claimed nothing. The decision is foundational — it shows that the disqualification, though personal in a narrow sense, blocks all claims that flow through the disqualified heir. The position has been affirmed in subsequent High Court decisions on similar facts.

Two cognate authorities round out the case-law. In Janak Rani Chadha v. State (NCT of Delhi), a husband convicted under Section 304 IPC for the death of his wife sought to send her estate to his parents. The High Court held that Section 27 made him non-existent for inheritance purposes; his parents could only claim through him; therefore they had no locus. In Minoti v. Sushil M. M., the Bombay High Court treated Section 25 as a complete bar, observing that once the civil court had reached the requisite finding the section operated automatically and required no further declaratory order.

Section 26 — Convert's descendants disqualified

Section 26 is the most carefully drafted of the disqualifications. Read it slowly. The convert herself — the person who has ceased to be a Hindu — is not disqualified by this section. Her own right to inherit from her Hindu relatives was settled by the Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850, which abolished loss-of-caste-and-religion as a bar to inheritance. The convert continues to inherit from her Hindu father, mother and other Hindu relatives notwithstanding her conversion.

The bar runs against the convert's descendants, but only the descendants born after the conversion. Children born before the conversion are not affected: they take from their Hindu relatives in the ordinary way. Descendants born after the conversion are barred from taking from Hindu relatives unless they themselves are Hindus when the succession opens. A child who reverts to Hinduism, or who is brought up as a Hindu, recovers the right to inherit. The cut-off is the moment when the succession opens — that is, the death of the intestate — not the date of the descendant's birth.

Three illustrations

1. H, a Hindu male, converts to Christianity in 2010. He has a son S1 born in 2005 (before conversion) and a daughter D1 born in 2015 (after conversion). H's Hindu father F dies intestate in 2024. S1 inherits as F's grandson via the Class I scheme. D1 is barred unless she is herself a Hindu when F dies.
2. If D1 had been brought up as a Hindu and was Hindu at the date of F's death, the bar drops away and she takes her Class I share through her father.
3. If H himself had been alive and a Hindu at F's death, none of the Section 26 questions arise as to H — H takes as F's son. Section 26 only intervenes where the line of descent crosses through a person who has ceased to be a Hindu.

The leading authorities include Vasudeva P. v. Devamani C. on the scope of “Hindu” for Section 26 purposes, and Narsimhulu v. Manemma, where the Andhra Pradesh High Court applied the section to a post-conversion child claiming through a grandparent. Both decisions emphasise that the operative date is the date of opening of the succession, not the date of birth or the date of conversion.

Section 27 — Succession when heir disqualified

Section 27 is the engine of the chapter. It supplies the legal fiction — treated as predeceased — that converts the bare disqualification of Sections 25 and 26 into operative succession outcomes. The fiction has three consequences worth memorising.

First, the per-stirpes branch is not closed. The disqualified heir's own legitimate descendants — who are not themselves disqualified by Section 26 — take through the disqualified heir. If S commits the murder of his father F, S is treated as predeceased; S's legitimate son SS inherits from F as the son of a predeceased son under the Class I scheme. The disqualification is personal to S; SS is not tainted by his father's act. The position is otherwise where S converted to another religion and SS was born after the conversion and is not himself a Hindu when F dies — then Section 26, not Section 27, takes SS out.

Second, claims that flow through the disqualified heir collapse. This is the Vellikannu point: the murderer's widow cannot claim through her murderer-husband because there is no inheritance vested in him to transmit. Where the widow's claim was on her own status as a Class I heir of someone other than the murdered intestate, Section 27 leaves her untouched.

Third, the fiction is confined to the inheritance to which the disqualification attaches. The murderer is not made non-existent for all purposes — he remains the natural father of his children, the husband of his wife, the son of his unmurdered mother. He may inherit from any other relative whose succession is not in any way furthered by his murder. The reach of Section 27 is only as wide as the reach of Section 25 or Section 26 that triggers it.

Section 28 — Disease, defect etc. NOT a disqualification

Section 28 is declaratory. It abolishes the older shastric and pre-Code rules that excluded an heir on the ground of bodily defect or disease. The pre-Code list was long and unflattering to modern reading: congenital blindness, congenital deafness and dumbness, want of limb or organ, congenital impotence, idiocy, lunacy from birth. The Hindu Inheritance (Removal of Disabilities) Act 1928 had already swept most of these away; Section 28 finished the job and added the residual clause — “or save as provided in this Act, on any other ground whatsoever.”

The residual clause is the operative phrase. It means the four positive disqualifications inside the Code itself — the now-repealed Section 24 (when it was alive), Section 25 (murder), Section 26 (post-conversion descendants), and the cut-off in Section 27 — are exhaustive. No new disqualification can be read in by analogy. Unchastity is no bar. Loss of caste is no bar. Want of limb is no bar. Mental illness is no bar. Even desertion of the husband during his lifetime, for a wife who would otherwise be a Class I heir, is no bar — the High Courts have held that an abandoned wife who lived with another man and bore his children is still entitled to inherit her husband's estate notwithstanding her unchastity.

How the disqualification interacts with the devolution scheme

Sections 24 to 28 operate before the rules of distribution under Sections 8 to 13 (males) and Sections 15 and 16 (females) are applied. The sequence is:

1. Open the succession on the death of the intestate.
2. Identify the heirs by class and order under the relevant scheme — Class I, Class II, agnates, cognates for males; the five entries of Section 15(1) for females.
3. Apply the Section 24 to 28 filter to each candidate heir. The filter is binary: an heir either passes or is treated as predeceased.
4. Run the per-capita and per-stirpes calculation under the unchanged distribution rules. The per-stirpes branches that pass through a disqualified heir survive on their own merits unless Section 26 takes them out.

The interaction with Section 6 — devolution of interest in coparcenary property deserves a separate note. Where a coparcener dies leaving a Class I female heir, the notional partition under Section 6 carves out his interest, which then devolves by intestate succession; the disqualifications run on that devolved share. Where the coparcener-son murders the propositus-coparcener, the murderer-son is treated as predeceased, his notional share passes by survivorship within the coparcenary, and the murderer's widow takes nothing through him as Vellikannu establishes. The same logic carries forward into the daughter's coparcenary right after the 2005 amendment: a daughter-coparcener who murders the propositus is treated as predeceased and her notional share is redistributed within the surviving coparcenary. The joint Hindu family and coparcenary doctrine supplies the substratum on which Section 25 then operates, and the law of partition provides the mechanics by which the disqualified coparcener's notional share is worked out.

The cognate provision in the Indian Succession Act, 1925

For completeness — and only for completeness, since this chapter is on the HSA — it is worth noticing that Section 125 of the Indian Succession Act 1925 contains a cognate murderer-disqualification rule applicable to non-Hindu intestate succession (and the testamentary succession of all communities including Hindus, by virtue of Sections 57 to 59). The structural logic is identical: a person who has caused or abetted the death of an intestate or testator is disqualified from taking under that succession. The legal-fiction language differs slightly, but the public-policy foundation is the same equitable rule articulated in Kenchava v. Girimallappa. The reader who needs the Section 125 ISA position should consult a dedicated treatment, including the chapter on testamentary succession among Hindus; for HSA intestate purposes the four sections studied here are exhaustive.

Leading authorities at a glance

1. Kenchava v. Girimallappa Channappa Somasagar (1924) — the Privy Council's foundational ruling that the murderer is excluded from succession as a paramount rule of public policy, independent of any statutory text. Continues to inform the construction of Section 25.
2. Vellikannu v. R. Singaperumal (2005) 6 SCC 622 — a coparcener-son who murders his father is treated as predeceased; the murderer's widow cannot claim the murdered father's estate through her husband.
3. Janak Rani Chadha v. State (NCT of Delhi) — the parents of a husband convicted under Section 304 IPC for his wife's death cannot claim her estate through their disqualified son; he is non-existent for inheritance purposes by Section 27.
4. N. Sitaramaiah v. Ramakrishnaiah — conviction on a lesser violent count in the same fatal incident is enough to attract Section 25; the section is not tied to Section 300 IPC.
5. G.S. Sadashiva v. M.C. Srinivasan, AIR 2001 Kar 453 — where the criminal court has clearly accepted suicide and acquitted, and no fresh civil-court material is led, Section 25 does not bar inheritance.
6. Sarita C. v. Chetan C. — a clear acquittal of a widow on the murder charge, with no further civil-court material, allows her to inherit her husband's estate.
7. Minoti v. Sushil M. M., AIR 1982 Bom 68 — Section 25 is a complete bar; once the civil-court finding is made, the disqualification operates without need for a further declaratory order.
8. Vasudeva P. v. Devamani C. — explains the “Hindu at the time when the succession opens” cut-off in Section 26.
9. Narsimhulu v. Manemma, AIR 1988 AP 309 — applies Section 26 to a post-conversion child claiming through a Hindu grandparent.
10. Eramma v. Veerupana, AIR 1966 SC 1879 — reminder that disqualifications removed by the Code do not retrospectively reopen successions that had already opened and closed before the Code.

MCQ angle — the recurring traps

The chapter yields a small set of high-frequency exam traps. Master these and you will not lose marks here.

1. Section 24 is repealed. Any answer that treats the remarriage of the son's widow, son's son's widow or brother's widow as a current bar is wrong post-9 September 2005.
2. Murderer in a wider sense. Section 25 is not coterminous with Section 300 IPC. Culpable homicide, Section 304 IPC convictions, even acquittals on the principal charge accompanied by a violent-offence conviction, can attract the bar.
3. The convert herself is not disqualified. Section 26 bars only the post-conversion descendants who are not Hindus at the date of the succession. The convert continues to inherit from her Hindu relatives by force of the 1850 Act.
4. The disqualified heir's own legitimate issues are not automatically out. The fiction in Section 27 closes the heir, not the heir's branch. Section 26 is the only place where the bar runs through the descendant line, and only on its own conditions.
5. Disease, defect, mental illness, unchastity — none of these are disqualifications. Section 28 is declaratory and exhaustive on this point.
6. Civil disqualification operates independently of the criminal trial. Acquittal in criminal proceedings is not a complete defence to a Section 25 plea; conviction is not always conclusive either; the civil court applies its own standard.
7. Wife of the murderer takes nothing through him. Vellikannu closes the route by which a chain of heirs flows through a disqualified person. She may still claim independently as a Class I heir of someone else.
8. Disqualifications apply before distribution. Sections 8 to 13 and Sections 15 and 16 run on the surviving pool of heirs. Do not invert the order in your answer.
9. Equitable principle survives the Code. Even in testamentary succession (outside Section 25), the older equitable rule that a murderer cannot benefit from his wrong continues to be applied by the civil courts.
10. The deletion of Section 24 is not retrospective. Successions that opened before 9 September 2005 must still be tested against the section as it then stood.

Putting the chapter together

Five sections, one rule. The Hindu Succession Act has rewritten the older Hindu-law catalogue of disqualifications down to two live exclusions — the murderer and the convert's post-conversion non-Hindu descendants — plus the historical Section 24 that the 2005 amendment has now scrubbed out, plus the Section 28 sweep clause that abolishes everything else. The mechanics are simple: the disqualified heir is treated as predeceased by force of Section 27, the per-stirpes branch survives on its own merits unless Section 26 also catches it, and the rest of the Class I, Class II, agnate and cognate scheme runs unchanged.

The chapter sits inside a tightly connected web of provisions. The succession scheme for males in Sections 8 to 13 and the scheme for females in Sections 15 and 16 supply the heir-list to which the filter is applied; the notional-partition machinery in Section 6 determines the share that becomes available for intestate devolution in coparcenary cases; the object and application provisions of the Act identify who is a Hindu for these purposes; the law of stridhan rounds out the women's-property side of the picture. The Mitakshara and Dayabhaga school distinction still informs the analysis where the question concerns the survivorship route in coparcenary cases — though the disqualifications themselves are codified and apply uniformly. The aspirant who carries Sections 24 to 28 forward into each of those chapters has mastered the spine of intestate devolution under the leading cases of Hindu personal law.

Frequently asked questions

Is Section 24 of the Hindu Succession Act still in force?

No. Section 24, which disqualified three categories of widows — the son's widow, the son of the son's widow, and the brother's widow — from inheriting if they had remarried before the succession opened, was deleted by the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act 39 of 2005 with effect from 9 September 2005. After that date there is no statutory disqualification on remarriage. Successions that opened before the amendment, however, are still tested against the section as it then stood; the deletion is not retrospective.

Is the term 'murder' in Section 25 the same as Section 300 IPC?

No. The Legislature has used 'murder' in Section 25 in a wider, popular sense than the technical definition in Section 300 of the Indian Penal Code. Culpable homicide not amounting to murder, conviction under Section 304 IPC, and even an acquittal on the principal charge accompanied by a conviction for a lesser violent offence in the same fatal incident, can attract the disqualification. The Supreme Court in Vellikannu and the High Courts in Sitaramaiah and Sadashiva have applied the wider construction consistently.

Does Section 26 disqualify a Hindu who converts to another religion from inheriting?

No. The convert herself is not disqualified by Section 26 — her right to inherit from her Hindu relatives was secured by the Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850, and continues unaffected by her conversion. Section 26 disqualifies only the convert's descendants who were born after the conversion, and only if they are not themselves Hindus at the time when the succession opens. A post-conversion descendant who is brought up as a Hindu, or who reverts, recovers the right to inherit.

Can the wife of a murderer-son inherit her father-in-law's property?

No. The Supreme Court in Vellikannu v. R. Singaperumal (2005) 6 SCC 622 held that where a coparcener-son murders his father, Section 27 read with Section 25 treats the son as predeceased; the son has no estate of his father to transmit; the son's widow, claiming purely through him, claims nothing. The disqualification is personal to the heir but blocks every claim that flows through him. The widow may still inherit independently from someone other than the murdered father-in-law.

Are the legitimate children of a disqualified heir also barred?

Not automatically. Section 27 closes the disqualified heir's own claim by treating her as predeceased, but it does not close her per-stirpes branch. The murderer-son's legitimate son, for example, takes from the murdered grandfather as the son of a predeceased son under the Class I scheme. The only place the bar runs through the descendant line is Section 26 — and Section 26 catches only post-conversion descendants who are themselves non-Hindu when the succession opens.

Are mental illness, unchastity or physical disability bars to inheritance under the Act?

No. Section 28 declares that no person is disqualified on the ground of any disease, defect or deformity, or on any ground other than those provided in the Act itself. The pre-Code list — congenital blindness, deafness and dumbness, want of limb, idiocy, lunacy from birth, unchastity of a widow, loss of caste — has been swept away. The four positive disqualifications inside the Code (Section 24 pre-2005, Section 25 murder, Section 26 convert's descendants, with the operative fiction in Section 27) are exhaustive.