--- title: A widow accused a chartered accountant of extracting a will and a power of attorney from an ailing family friend. description: A widow accused a family friend of trying to get her ailing husband to sign a will, then taking a power of attorney while unwell. The Board found a civil dispute over wills and held him not guilty. case_number: BOD 617/2022 file_number: PR/397/2018/DD/66/2019/BOD/617/2022 forum: board-of-discipline institute: icai decided_on: 2024-05-07 outcome: Not guilty clauses: Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule order_pdf: https://disc.icai.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/9.-BOD-617-2022.pdf published: 2026-09-09 author: Jainam Shah keywords: bod 617 2022, item 2 part iv first schedule, other misconduct, property dispute, competing wills, power of attorney dispute, civil dispute jurisdiction, board of discipline not guilty source: /icai/board-of-discipline/bod-617-2022 --- # A widow accused a chartered accountant of extracting a will and a power of attorney from an ailing family friend. A family friendship gave a chartered accountant's family a room in another man's house during hard times of their own, and they stayed there for years. After the man died, his widow told the Institute that the friendship had ended in an attempted will, a power of attorney taken while he was unwell, and a fight over the house itself.[^parties] ## What happened ```timeline A chartered accountant's family is going through a partition dispute of its own. A family friend, whose own daughters are married and settled elsewhere, offers his house to the accountant and his family, and they move in. While the friend is unwell, the accountant is said to have tried to get him to sign a will naming the accountant his heir. The friend does not sign it. Soon after, the accountant is said to have obtained a power of attorney bearing the friend's signature and thumb impression while he was in a weakened state — but the friend, on realising what had happened, cuts through the signature with red ink. The friend and his wife say the accountant's family began threatening them, and the friend dies some time later. His widow says she and her married daughters are then kept out of her own house, and that a sum of money is taken from her family towards vacating the property. Separately, the accountant goes to the High Court over the property, relying on two registered wills made years apart, both older than the unregistered will the widow relies on. Revenue authorities and a civil court are drawn into the same dispute over who the house and the bank accounts belong to. The widow complains to the Institute that the accountant's conduct amounts to professional misconduct. The Board hears both sides and finds that the entire complaint rests on which of the wills is genuine — a question the wills, not the Board, will have to answer. ``` Three things anchored the complaint: a power of attorney the Board never ruled on, three wills naming different people, and a payment both sides agreed was made but disagreed about why. The power of attorney came from the widow's own account, drawn from a police complaint she had filed: the friend was made to sign it while unwell, and cut through his own signature in red ink once he saw it (para 2). The Board never took a position on this document, because the whole dispute was found to fall outside its jurisdiction before that question was reached. The wills were the real fight. The widow relied on an unregistered will dated 15 September 2017, naming her the owner. The respondent relied on two registered wills — one made at Bhopal on 7 November 2009, naming him the beneficiary, and one made at Betul on 29 June 2015, giving the widow the right to enjoy the property until her death and the respondent the property after (paras 9–10). The payment was ₹15 lakh. The widow said it had been taken from her family to make them vacate the property. A registered compromise deed dated 30 December 2017 recorded it instead as a voluntary payment towards rent and property-maintenance expenses (para 12). ## The charge - **Item (2) of Part IV** of the First Schedule — the profession's catch-all clause for conduct that, in the opinion of the Council or its Boards, brings disrepute to the profession, whether or not it arises out of professional work.[^item2p4] The widow asked the Board to hold the respondent guilty under this clause for mentally harassing her, blocking her and her daughters from entering her own house, physically harming her, and taking ₹15 lakh from her family towards vacating the property and its upkeep (para 3). She also said the respondent had gone to the Chhattisgarh High Court over the property despite knowing that, under her husband's final will, the house and bank accounts belonged to her, and that a Tehsil transfer dispute the respondent had raised over the same property remained pending because of his influence (paras 4–5). The Board did not test any of these allegations on their own terms. It held instead that the whole dispute was a fight over property title between two people who each claimed to be the rightful owner under a different will, and that this fight belonged to a civil court, not to it. ## What the respondent said The respondent's written statement, filed in July 2023, answered on the wills and on the money. He said the claim of harassment over an elderly woman's self-owned property was unfounded, because legal proceedings existed for a real reason: two registered wills, made at Bhopal in 2009 and at Betul in 2015, both named him the beneficiary. He challenged the third, unregistered will of 2017 as forged — unregistered, silent on cancelling the two earlier wills, and produced only after a long delay following the widow's complaint. He pointed to a police examination that had cleared him of wrongdoing over the alleged physical harm and the alleged denial of access to the property. The ₹15 lakh, he said, was never payment to vacate anything — it was a voluntary sum, fixed in a registered compromise deed, towards rent and the cost of maintaining the property. He said proceedings were already under way before revenue authorities, a civil court and the Supreme Court to settle the dispute, and that the widow had to produce evidence, not assertions, to make her case (para 8). ## What the Board held The Board read the dispute as one over the ownership rights to the property (para 9). The widow's claim rested on an unregistered will of 2017; the respondent's rested on two registered wills, of 2009 and 2015 (paras 9–10). The second of those gave the widow the use of the property for her lifetime and the respondent the property after her — which meant that, on the respondent's own case, the widow was not yet due to lose anything (para 10). On the question of who was actually living in the house, the Board found gaps on both sides: despite video and audio evidence, the widow had not produced documents establishing where she was in fact residing, and the respondent had not definitively established the widow's residence either (para 11). On the ₹15 lakh, the Board went with the paper trail. The registered compromise deed of 30 December 2017 recorded a voluntary payment for rent and maintenance, and nothing on record supported the claim that the sum had instead been extracted to force a vacation (para 12). That left the Board with a title dispute dressed as a misconduct complaint: > Since the matter relates to the civil dispute between the parties, therefore, it is beyond the > jurisdiction of this forum to adjudicate. (para 13) ## The order > in the considered opinion of the Board, the Respondent is 'NOT GUILTY' of Other Misconduct > falling within the meaning of Item (2) of Part IV of the First Schedule to the Chartered > Accountants Act, 1949. Accordingly, the Board passed Order for closure of the case in terms of the > provisions of Rule 15 (2) of the Chartered Accountants (Procedure of Investigations of > Professional and Other Misconduct and Conduct of Cases) Rules, 2007. (para 14) No punishment stage followed.[^rule] The Board closed the file on jurisdiction, after weighing the wills and the compromise deed, without ruling on who owns the house.[^coram] ## Why it matters *This section is ours, not the Board's.* **A title fight does not become misconduct by being filed at the Institute.** The widow's strongest evidence — the wills, the compromise deed — was exactly the evidence a civil court decides on. If your dispute with another professional is really about who owns something, take it to the forum that can settle ownership. **A registered deed beats a disputed memory of what a payment was for.** The ₹15 lakh survived as "rent and maintenance" because that is what the registered compromise deed said, not because either side argued it well. Record what a payment is for at the time you make or receive it. **Living inside a shared house blurs whose word counts.** Neither side could document who was actually residing where, despite video evidence being offered. If proof of possession matters to your case, get it in writing or through an independent record, not a recording. This summarises a public order and links the primary source. It is general information, not legal or professional advice. [^parties]: *Ms. Kala Somani*, Bhopal, was the complainant, appearing with her daughter *Smt. Madhu Maheshwari*. The dispute concerned the property of her late husband, *Shri M.C. Somani*. *CA. Prasan Kumar Deshlahra (M. No. 072853)*, Raipur, was the respondent — the son of a family friend of the complainant's husband. [^item2p4]: Part IV of the First Schedule deals with "other misconduct" — conduct that does not arise from professional work as such but still, in the opinion of the Council or its Boards, brings disrepute to the profession. Item (2) is its general clause. [^rule]: Rule 15(2) of the Chartered Accountants (Procedure of Investigations of Professional and Other Misconduct and Conduct of Cases) Rules, 2007 — where the Board finds a member not guilty, it records that finding and orders the complaint closed. There is no punishment hearing. [^coram]: CA. Rajendra Kumar P (Presiding Officer), Ms. Dolly Chakraborty, IAAS (Retd.) (Government Nominee) and CA. Priti Savla (Member) heard the matter in person and signed the findings. There were three hearings — 4 May 2023 (part heard, a final opportunity given to the complainant), 27 July 2023 (adjourned at the respondent's request) and 20 March 2024, when the matter was heard and concluded, both parties appearing by video conference at the final hearing. The findings are dated 7 May 2024.