Hyderabad: In a significant legal setback for Nandamuri Lakshmi Parvathi, the widow of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister NT Rama Rao, the Telangana High Court has dismissed her petition to assume control of the Basavatarakam Medical Trust in Hyderabad.
The court’s ruling, delivered by Justice G Radha Rani, rejected her claims based on a purported supplemental will allegedly written by NTR in 1995, which she argued named her as the trust’s managing trustee.
Currently, the trust is administered by NTR’s son, actor-politician Nandamuri Balakrishna.
The court identified several procedural errors in Lakshmi Parvathi’s argument, particularly her failure to adequately demonstrate the unavailability or death of the attesting witnesses to the will.
Instead of providing death certificates or seeking summons for their testimony, she merely claimed they were unavailable, a stance the court found insufficient.
Justice Rani emphasized that under the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, proving a will necessitates strict adherence to legal protocols, which Lakshmi Parvathi did not follow.
Her attempt to substitute the testimony of a witness’s son was deemed legally irrelevant, as only actual attesting witnesses can validate a will.
With this ruling, Balakrishna’s petition has been upheld, effectively overturning an earlier decision by the city civil court that had favored Lakshmi Parvathi.
This outcome not only reinforces Balakrishna’s control over the Basavatarakam Medical Trust but also places Lakshmi Parvathi in a challenging position as she must now explore alternative legal avenues to establish the legitimacy of the 1995 will.
Should she fail to do so in accordance with the Indian Evidence Act, the will may ultimately be declared invalid.
The Basavatarakam Medical Trust operates the Basavatarakam Indo-American Cancer Hospital & Research Institute, which was founded by NTR in memory of his first wife.
Following her death, NTR married Lakshmi Parvathi in 1994—a union that faced resistance from his children from his first marriage. After NTR’s passing in January 1996, Balakrishna has managed the trust.
Lakshmi Parvathi initially approached the Hyderabad city civil court in 2009, asserting that NTR had executed a supplemental will on November 18, 1995, designating her as the managing trustee. She sought an order under Section 74 of the Indian Trust Act of 1920 to formally recognize her authority and prevent interference from existing trust members.
A central issue in this dispute is the validity of the supplemental will. The document was reportedly witnessed by two individuals—J Venkata Subbaiah and Y Tirupathi Rao—who have since died.
While NTR’s sons opposed Lakshmi Parvathi’s claims and questioned the authenticity of the will, she attempted to validate it through testimony from JV Prasad Rao, son of one of the original witnesses.
However, Balakrishna and the Basavatarakam Medical Trust contested this move in high court in 2019, arguing that Prasad Rao could not provide valid testimony as he was not an attesting witness himself.
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