Claimant to Jayalalithaa's estate dies; Madras High Court seeks verification
Madras High Court told that N.J. Vasudevan, who claimed to be Jayalalithaa's half-brother and sought 50% of her properties, has died.
The Madras High Court has been informed that N.J. Vasudevan, the 86-year-old man who claimed to be the half-brother of former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and sought a 50% share of her properties, died in Mysuru, Karnataka, on June 2, 2026.
Advocate S.L. Sudharsanam, appearing for Jayalalithaa's niece J. Deepa and nephew J. Deepak, told a Division Bench of Justices Abdul Quddhose and R. Rajesh Vivekananthan that the applicant was no more and placed a news report about the death before the court.
The judges directed the High Court Registry to verify the correctness of the counsel's statement and to send a notice to the applicant's Mysuru address to ascertain whether anyone else wished to come on record in his place to pursue the case. The matter was adjourned to November 5, 2026.
Vasudevan had moved the court in 2023 seeking to revoke an order passed on May 27, 2020 by a Bench of Justice N. Kirubakaran (since retired) and Justice Quddhose, which declared Ms. Deepa and Mr. Deepak the inheritors of their aunt's properties.
He claimed to have been born to the first wife of Jayalalithaa's father and said his mother had filed a case as far back as 1950 seeking maintenance from his father. Asserting a right over half of Jayalalithaa's properties, he asked the court to set aside the declaration made in favour of the niece and nephew alone. He also said he had written several letters to Ms. Deepa after Jayalalithaa's death and contended that, in all fairness, she ought to have made him a party to the case filed by her and her brother for inheriting the properties.
In its 2020 ruling, the Bench held that the siblings were entitled to inherit all of Jayalalithaa's self-acquired properties as well as those she had inherited from her parents, under Sections 15(1)(d) and 15(2)(a) of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956. It noted that under Section 15(1), the self-acquired property of a female Hindu dying intestate devolves first on her sons and daughters, including the children of any predeceased son or daughter, and her husband; then on the heirs of the husband; and then on her mother and father. Only if none of these are available does the property devolve on the heirs of the father under Section 15(1)(d).
Since Mr. Deepak and his sister are the children of Jayalalithaa's brother J. Jayakumar, who predeceased her, the Bench held that they were entitled to inherit her self-acquired properties under that provision. It further held that Section 15(2)(a) provides that property inherited by a female Hindu from her father or mother shall devolve, in the absence of any son or daughter, not on the other heirs in the order set out in Section 15(1) but on the heirs of the father. On that basis, properties such as Veda Nilayam, Jayalalithaa's Poes Garden residence in Chennai, which she inherited under a Will executed by her mother Sandhya alias Vedha Jayaram in 1971, would also pass to Ms. Deepa and Mr. Deepak as children of Jayakumar, one of the legal heirs of Jayalalithaa's father.