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INTRODUCTION
How many of us have heard the term “Escheat”? While at first blush it sounds like it is a new form of cheating, the reality is far from this. Escheat is a legal phrase of French origin which means that the property of a deceased, to which there are no legal claimants, falls to the State, i.e., reverts to the Government. This law is useful in cases of intestate succession since the Laws of India provide that in cases where there is no legal heir of the deceased, the State becomes the entity entitled to succeed to his estate. The Supreme Court in Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Co., Ltd vs. the State of Bombay, 1958 AIR 328 has held that the expression "abandoned property" or to use the more familiar term "bona vacantia " comprises properties of two different kinds, those which come in by escheat and those over which no one has a claim. In Halsbury's Laws of England, Third Edition, Vol. 7, page 536, para. 1152, it is stated that " the term bona vacantia is applied to things in which no one can claim a property and includes the residuary estate of persons dying intestate ".
The earliest exposition on this issue was by the Privy Council in the case of Collector of Masulipatnam v. Cavaly Vencata Narainapah (1859-1961) 8 M.I.A. 529. The Court held that the estate of a Hindu Brahmin, dying without hei
