High Court rules solicitor’s will cutting out daughter was a forgery

The judge says that referencing Pakistani assets was likely forged and not written by solicitor

A High Court judge has ruled that a will purportedly written by a deceased East London solicitor, which excluded his daughter and left his estate to a tenant, was not genuine and likely a forgery.

Deputy High Court Judge Caroline Shea KC said the document raised serious doubts, especially its reference to properties in Pakistan, despite no evidence that Monir Jaman Shaikh ever owned assets there.

Mr Shaikh, born in 1956 in Bangladesh, had practised law there before moving to the UK in 1992. He was called to the English bar in 2008 and became a solicitor in 2013. He founded PGA Solicitors and remained principal until his death from Covid-19 in April 2020, just shy of 64.

His only child, Mosammat Shapna Khatun, challenged the will, claiming her father would never have excluded her and left his entire estate to Shamim Hasan, an IT consultant who rented a room in the same property as Shaikh.

Hasan claimed he only discovered the will weeks after Shaikh’s death, when former solicitor Rajesh Pathania—who had been struck off—arrived at his door with the document. Pathania was named as the sole executor.

The judge described the will as uncharacteristic of a trained solicitor, riddled with errors, including spelling mistakes and structural flaws, such as referring to a residuary estate without any primary bequest.

She highlighted the complete absence of documentation relating to the will’s creation. There were no phone records, no drafts, no metadata, and no steps taken to retrieve digital files from Shaikh’s computer. This undermined the defendants’ claim that Shaikh wrote the will himself.

Judge Shea also found no credible evidence that Shaikh was estranged from his daughter, nor sufficient proof that he shared the close bond with Hasan that the defendants claimed. The reference in the will to property in Pakistan was particularly damning.

“There is no conceivable reason, short of a disturbance of the mind—which is not alleged—that he would identify properties he didn’t own in a country where he held no assets,” she wrote.

The judge concluded that the most plausible explanation was that the will was not authored by Mr Shaikh, nor drafted at his direction or with his knowledge.

While Ms Khatun could not decisively prove her father maintained close ties with her, Judge Shea stressed the burden of proof lay with the defendants, who had failed to meet it.

With this ruling, Shaikh’s estate is expected to revert to intestacy rules, likely placing his daughter back in line to inherit.