New Delhi: Until now, inheritance battles in Indian courtrooms have been fought over property, money, gold and jewellery. But, a Gandhinagar court’s decision earlier this month allowing a woman to access her late father’s iCloud account may just have opened a legal gateway for next of kin to also inherit something less tangible—digital property.
Relying on settled legal principles while navigating the contours of the Indian Succession Act and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, the ruling raises a more complicated question: should legal heirs automatically gain access to deeply personal digital information simply because it forms part of a deceased person’s estate?The case arose when Shaishav Dineshbhai Shah from Gandhinagar died intestate (without leaving a will) on 24 April, 2025, with his wife and daughter as his only Class-I legal heirs. While the family inherited his physical belongings, they hit a wall regarding his “digital estate”: an iPhone 13 Pro Max and an associated Apple iCloud account.
Arguing that the account contained data of immense “emotional, sentimental, and practical significance”, including years of photographs, videos, and voice notes, the daughter sought “Letters of Administration” for assets that exist not in a bank vault, but on a server.Apple said it could only facilitate access if the family was formally appointed as the estate’s legal administrator through a specific court order.Granting the plea, the court of Himanshu Choudhary, Additional Senior Civil Judge in Gandhinagar, said that in the absence of a nominee, the rights to manage and access the data must logically devolve upon the legal heirs, who essentially step into the position of a “data principal” for administration.The core of the legal strategy rested on the Indian Succession Act, 1925.The petitioners filed their case under Section 278 of the act, seeking to be appointed as administrators of the deceased’s estate. A critical challenge was determining whether digital data could be considered “property” under the century-old law.The court concluded that the existing legal framework in India was sufficiently broad to recognise digital data as “movable property”.Drawing from the General Clauses Act, 1897, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, the court noted that the definition of property is inclusive and expansive.By recognising digital assets as part of the “estate”, the court allowed the Indian Succession Act to be applied to cloud storage, granting the daughter the authority to manage her father’s digital legacy as his legal representative.
