Widow who donated kidney to tycoon wins Sh200m inheritance battle

At the age of 26 years, Rupa Bulbuli Gupta came to Kenya as a sourced professional musician from India to entertain special guests at a high-end Casino in the leafy suburbs of Nyali owned by the late tycoon Prem Lal Ramnath.

Rupa met with Ramnath in 1996, when he employed her as a singer at his establishment that hosted a casino, hotel and restaurant.

Three years later, Ramnath, an ailing and elderly man abandoned by his first wife and two children for 20 years fell in love and married Rupa on December 17, 1999, and hired her as a manager of his businesses.

Rupa was 29 years old when he married 52-year-old Ramnath and stayed with him until his death on November 24, 2019.

Rupa donated her kidney to Ramnath on July 17, 2012, and spent 20 years of her life caring for the husband who suffered cardiopulmonary arrest due to tuberculosis, having struggled with ill health for a long period of time.

After his demise, Rupa inherited a vast wealth and estate worth over Sh200 million from Ramnath, including beach plots, real estate, construction companies, a supermarket and other investments.

Thoughtfully, she listed herself and Ramnath’s two children, Varun Gupta and Yatika Gupta, from his first wife Aruna Gupta.

However, Aruna and her children came from Canada and filed a petition seeking a revocation of a letter of grant of administration issued to Rupa on February 1, 2023, by the court.

Aruna challenged the legality of Rupa’s marriage to Ramnath, alleging Hindu’s do not practice polygamy.

Aruna’s elder son, Varun, disputed that her stepmother was never a musician but a mere dancer (Mujra) employed to dance in bars to lure men to the business.

He said Rupa never shared a room with his late father and accused her of neglecting him and that she was only interested in his money and inciting him against them.

He said that his father’s businesses were registered in the names of a limited liability company which required resolutions for Rupa to manage them.

However, Rupa told Justice Mutai that she was Ramnath’s lawful wife, having lived with him for 20 years while Aruna lived in Canada with her children from 2001.

“Prior to the marriage, I worked for him as a professional musician, and thereafter as a manager of his businesses, responsible for running and overseeing the complex that hosted a casino, hotel, restaurant,” said Rupa.

She accused Aruna of mistreating Ramnath, and causing him to develop health complications.

She said that Aruna always wanted to move to Canada and be as far away as possible from Ramnath, a fact she fulfilled in 2000 when she relocated with her children ever since.

Rupa said that she took care of his deceased husband during his ailment and accompanied him to India where she donated a kidney to him as they both had similar blood groups.

She accused Aruna and her children of abandoning Ramnath and appeared to be waiting for him to die to inherit his property.

Rupa accused Varun of slapping his late father and said that Ramnath’s own sister advised him against a kidney transplant and instead wait for his time to die.

She further said that Aruna and her children did not participate in the funeral arrangements or settle the hospital bills.

In her view, Aruna and the children devised ways to take over the assets and throw her out immediately after Ramnath died.

She told the court that by moving on and contracting another marriage, Ramnath had conclusively shown that he had no desire to continue the marital relationship with Aruna.

Rupa said that Aruna evinced a similar desire by staying away for 20 years and could no longer be deemed to be Ramnath’s wife.

In his judgement, Justice Gregory Mutai dismissed the allegations that Rupa was a gold-digger.

The judge said that the allegation that Rupa’s act of kindness towards the husband was motivated by commercial reasons was a scurrilous attempt to besmirch her reputation so that she could be disinherited.

“There were attempts to paint Rupa as a gold-digger. I am not persuaded that she was. She risked her life to donate a kidney to the deceased, something the applicants, for whatever reason, failed to do,” said Justice Mutai.

He said there was no evidence to show that Rupa was paid to donate her kidney.

 The judge held that even if Rupa was a murja dancer, as alleged by Varun, it did not stop his father from falling in love with her and it did not mean her life could not improve.

“Mr Varun Gupta appears to be stuck in classist thinking that should not be acceptable in this day and age. His father had every right, in exercising his agency and autonomy, to look for love wherever he could find it,” said Justice Mutai.

The judge proceeded to uphold Rupa's marriage with Ramnath and said she was legally married under a civil marriage and well known to Aruna and her children which qualified her to apply for a grant of administration over the estate of his deceased husband.

Justice Mutai said that Rupa being a wife, she was under no obligation to get the consent of Varun and Yatika, as she ranked higher under Section 66 of the Law of Succession Act.

The judge also concluded that Ramnath was in his right mind when he married Rupa.

“It would appear to me that at the time of the celebration of the said marriage, the deceased (Ramnath) did not suffer from any infirmity of the body or mind that perverted his intentions. Although he had been ailing for a long period of time, leading to his kidney transplant, his cognitive ability, at the time of the marriage and thereafter, was not questioned. In essence, he knew what he was doing,” said Justice Mutai.

The judge noted that Aruna abandoned his ailing husband who needed her companionship, love and care even after concluding her purpose in Canada that involved taking care of her late other and settling her children in school.

The judge also said that there was not much of a marriage between the deceased and Aruna at the time of his demise and it appears each party had moved on and the court must make a presumption of a divorce.

He further said that to recognize, on the one hand, that marriage was dead during his lifetime, and to give it legal force upon death would be rather bizarre.

“Following her mother's death and the children's graduation, she never returned. On one occasion, she came back in 2014, she appeared to have made peace with the fact that Ramnath had moved on and found love in the arms of Ms Rupa Gupta,” said Justice Mutai.

According to Varun his late father never divorced his mother after getting married in 1982 under the Hindu Customs and celebrating their honeymoon in Toronto.

He said that although her mother was aware of the illegal and bigamous marriage between Rupa and Ramnath, she ignored to avoid his husband from going to jail.

Varun accused her step-mother lied about her age and termed the certificate of marriage between Rupa and Ramnath fraudulent.

He said they relocated to Canada for studies and often visited their late father who also visited then in Canada regularly.

Varun said they never donated their kidneys due to blood mismatch and that Rupa’s kidney donation was not out of love but a business transaction that cost his late father a three-story apartment in Kolkata, a substantial amount of money and a property in her name in Ahmedabad, India.

He averred that he and his mother were in charge of the funeral and Rupa was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared the night before.

In a cross-examination by Rupa’s lawyer, Khalid Salim, Varun conceded that the step-mother lived with their father for 20 years while they stayed in Canada with their mother.

In her testimony, Aruna, she was married to Ramnath on February 14 1982 under the Hindu religious law that prescribes monogamy and that their marriage was never dissolved.

She denied abandoning Ramnath and claimed that the late husband married Rupa to help her obtain citizenship to conduct her business as a mujra dancer in Kenya.

However, in his evidence, Lusher Narum Das, a chairman of a temple in Mombasa testified that indeed Rupa and Ramnath were married.