India, May 22 -- Noting that the very purpose of a will is to alter the normal line of succession, the Supreme Court on Thursday said that merely excluding natural heirs from inheritance cannot by itself be treated as a suspicious circumstance to invalidate a will.

A bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Vijay Bishnoi dismissed an appeal filed by the wife and children of late B Sheena Nairi, challenging the validity of a will through which the deceased had bequeathed his properties in Karnataka to his sister Laxmi Nairthy.

The top court upheld concurrent findings of the trial court, the appellate court and the Karnataka High Court, which had accepted the will as genuine.

"The exclusion of the natural heirs cannot be sufficient to vitiate ...