SC directs courts to protect women’s inheritance rights

Дата публикации: 02-07-2026 01:44:19

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled that all courts and revenue authorities dealing with inheritance disputes must remain mindful that the law leans in favour of protecting, rather than undermining, women’s inheritance rights.
“Any transaction having the effect of excluding a female heir from succession must be examined with the utmost care, caution, and judicial scrutiny,” said the judgment authored by Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan.
The SC two-member bench set aside the judgments and decrees passed by the Trial Court, the Appellate Court, and the Lahore High Court.
The brief facts of the case are that Roshan, son of Bora, owner of a property, died in the year 1955. Consequent upon his death, Inheritance Mutation No.74 was entered on 04.04.1955 in favour of his legal heirs.
On the same day, Mutation No.75 was also entered based on an alleged oral gift purportedly made by the widow and daughters of the deceased in favour of his two sons/brothers. Both mutations were sanctioned on 17.04.1955.
The case of the plaintiffs/petitioners is that the alleged gift never took place and that Mutation No.75 was wrongly sanctioned to deprive the female heirs of their lawful inheritance. The suit was dismissed by the Trial Court. The appeal preferred there against met the same fate before the Appellate Court. A Civil Revision filed before the Lahore High Court was also dismissed vide judgment dated 26.01.2016.
The judgment said that the right of inheritance is not a bounty to be bestowed at the pleasure of male family members nor a concession dependent upon custom, convenience, or familial goodwill. “It is a vested Shari and legal right which devolves upon the heirs immediately upon the death of the predecessor-in-interest and cannot be defeated through private arrangements, social pressures, dubious revenue entries or procedural stratagems.”
The Court noted that the deprivation of women from inheritance is not an isolated phenomenon but a recurring social injustice which survives despite the clear commands of Islam. The persistence of such disputes reveals that the problem is not merely legal but societal. The denial of inheritance rights often begins not in courtrooms but within homes, families and communities where women are expected to sacrifice rights guaranteed to them by religion and law in the name of tradition, family honour or social convenience.
The judgment said that the Constitution does not countenance the deprivation of women of their lawful inheritance. The State is not a passive spectator where women are deprived of property lawfully devolving upon them through succession, it added.
The judgment noted that the constitutional protection of property rights is rendered meaningless if inheritance rights can be defeated through coercion, fraud, social pressure, manipulated revenue entries, dubious family arrangements, or prolonged litigation.
The Constitution, therefore, imposes a positive obligation upon all organs of the State, including the courts and revenue authorities, to ensure that female heirs can obtain, retain and enjoy their lawful inheritance in a practical and effective manner and not merely as a matter of abstract legal entitlement.
“Any custom, practice, arrangement or device which has the effect of excluding a female heir from her lawful share not only offends the injunctions of Islam but is also inconsistent with the constitutional commitment to equality, dignity, social justice and protection of property rights.”
The judgment maintained that the responsibility, however, does not rest upon the State alone. Families, Community leaders, Islamic Scholars and Orators, members of the legal profession, revenue authorities and civil society all share a collective obligation to ensure that the rights conferred by Almighty Allah are neither diluted nor defeated.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026

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