Delhi high court judge Vikas Mahajan on Wednesday recused from hearing late businessman Sunjay Kapur’s mother, Rani Kapur, suit seeking a declaration that the Rani Kapur Family Trust is null and void, alleging that it was fraudulently constituted by her late son and daughter-in-law, Priya Kapur, and used as a vehicle to unlawfully divest her of the assets bequeathed to her by her husband.
The Trust was constituted under a trust deed dated October 26, 2017, and holds a shareholding in automotive component manufacturer Sona Comstar.
“List before some other bench after obtaining the orders from judge incharge on the original side,” Justice Mahajan said in the order, while listing the matter for January 29.
In her suit filed on January 20, Rani asserted that she was the sole beneficiary and legatee of the entire estate of her late husband, Surinder Kapur, the promoter of several businesses, including the Sona Group of Companies. She stated that upon his demise, his entire estate was bequeathed to her under a will that was duly probated by the Bombay High Court.
The suit added that after she suffered a stroke in 2017, her late son and his third wife, Priya Kapur, allegedly exploited her physical dependence and reposed trust to orchestrate a complex scheme by which all her assets were transferred into the trust without her informed consent, and the entire fraud perpetrated was discovered post her son’s demise.
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To be sure, Sunjay, who was the chairperson of Sona Comstar, died of cardiac arrest while playing polo in London on June 12 this year. He was earlier married to designer Nandita Mahtani, and later to actor Karisma Kapoor, with whom he has two children — Samaira and Kiaan. After their divorce in 2016, he married model-actor and businesswoman Priya in 2017, with whom he had a son, Azarius.
It further stated that upon receiving photocopies of the trust deed, she discovered that the trust assets were meant to be used exclusively for the benefit of late Sunjay Kapur during his lifetime, entirely excluding her. After his demise, 60% of the trust corpus was earmarked for the benefit of his third wife, Priya Kapur, while the remaining portion was to be utilised for the benefit of her grandchildren—Samaira Kapur and Kiaan Kapur (Sunjay Kapur’s children with Bollywood actor Karishma Kapoor) and Azairus Kapur (his son with Priya Kapur).
She added that she never knowingly executed any trust that excluded her from all benefits arising from the assets, or one that restricted the enjoyment of the trust solely to one branch of the family, leaving her effectively penniless during her lifetime. Rani further added that Priya is the “chief mastermind” of the conspiracy.
She further alleged that her signatures on the purported RK Family Trust deed were forged, a claim she said was corroborated by a forensic expert. She also asserted that she never read the trust deed, was never informed of or made to understand its contents, and was unaware that the document purported to divest her of her entire estate or to make her son the exclusive beneficiary of her legacy.
She has arrayed as defendants as many as 23 parties, including Priya Kapur and her seven grandchildren, among them Samaira and Kiaan, the two children of Sunjay Kapur with Bollywood actor Karishma Kapoor, as well as Nitin Sharma and Dinesh Agarwal, the witnesses to the will that purportedly bequeaths Sunjay’s entire estate to Priya Kapur.
The suit was filed days after the Delhi high court reserved verdict in a suit filed by Karishma Kapoor’s children, Samaira and Kiaan, to bar Priya and Azarius from creating a third-party interest in Sunjay’s properties.