Dead Do Not Log Out

On May 5, 2026, the Additional Senior Civil Judge, Gandhinagar, Gujarat granted Letters of Administration over a deceased man's iPhone and iCloud account to his daughter. Her father had died intestate. The family approached Apple seeking access to the deceased's account. Apple, exercising its contractual prerogative and institutional caution, communicated to the family that access to the deceased's data could be facilitated provided the petitioners produced a court order formally appointing them as administrators of the deceased's estate, containing specific declarations as to their status as legal personal representatives. The petitioners accordingly filed for Letters of Administration under the Indian Succession Act, 1925. The court ruled that the deceased's digital data, photos, videos, voice notes, contacts, all of it, constitutes inheritable property under Indian law. In doing so the Gandhinagar Court answered, or it began to answer: Is your digital life an inheritable property?

What Constitutes Property?

As the Romans say: Res corporales (things you can touch) and Res incorporales (things you cannot). The Romans drew the line at these two and considered the matter settled. Blackstone, later, described property as "sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe". Neither of them I suspect had an iPhone 13 in mind. Nor did they have iCloud storage, a lifetime of digital photographs, or the unparliamentary voice notes I send to my friends when they aren't picking up my call (which also constitute as property).

The Court while taking its decision drew upon a constellation of statutory provisions: the General Clauses Act, 1897; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023; the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002; and the Income Tax Act, 1961, to construct a composite picture of "property" broad enough to accommodate digital data. The Court further invoked the Supreme Court's liberal interpretive approach in Jilubhai Nanbhai Khachar v. State of Gujarat (1995) and State of West Bengal v. Subodh Gopal Bose (1953), wherein property was held to encompass all things subject to ownership, whether corporeal or incorporeal, tangible or intangible.

Digital data exhibits all the classical ingredients that make up “property”: it is subject to exclusive control; it possesses economic value (often considerable); it is capable of being transferred; and it enjoys legal protection against unauthorised access under Sections 43 and 66 of the Information Technology Act, 2000. If the laws protects data against trespass by a stranger, it is difficult to see why the same laws should simultaneously refuse to recognise it as an asset capable of transmission upon death.

Actio Personalis Moritur Cum Persona (A Personal Right Of Action Dies With The Person)

The most jurisprudentially significant aspect of this Order by the Gandhinagar Court, is the Court's treatment of the right to privacy. A nine judge bench of the Supreme Court in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) enshrined privacy as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution. The case also clarified that privacy is an inherently personal right. It is a right that resides with the person and not in the data itself. The consequence of this position as the Gandhinagar court correctly appreciated is that the right to privacy does not survive death. One's right to control the dissemination of one's personal information is extinguished at the moment of one's death.

The Delhi High Court in Krishna Kishore Singh v. Sarla A. Saraogi (2021) and Ruba Ahmed v. Hansal Mehta (2021) had similarly held that the right to privacy does not subsist after death and is not inheritable by legal heirs.

Interpreting the present Order, the law as it is likely to be followed now is that a person dying intestate in India today has no posthumous control over the contents of their phone. Their legal heirs may upon obtaining Letters of Administration, compel Apple, or Google, or any other digital platform to grant access to the entire digital data of the deceased. The only potential shield available is the one you erect in your lifetime, which may be a nominee under Section 14 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, or a carefully drafted Will for your digitals. One suspects this information will be of considerable interest to a great many people. And definitely to my mother when my time comes.

For all its doctrinal elegance the present Order also exposes the inadequacy of the existing statutory framework. The Indian Succession Act, 1925 was drafted in a time when the most technologically complex object in an estate was perhaps a wristwatch. It contains no provision for digital assets. The courts have done commendable work in stretching existing definitions to accommodate new realities, but there are inherent limits to judicial creativity. The legislature must act.

Section 14 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 provides for the nomination of a person to exercise the data principal's rights after their death. This is definitely a longed after beginning, but it is far from sufficient. The provision does not contemplate intestate succession; it does not address the legal status of the nominee vis-à-vis other legal heirs; it does not define what rights may be exercised posthumously; and it provides no mechanism for enforcement against recalcitrant platform providers.

The proposed amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000, which introduce concepts such as "digital asset will" and "digital executor," are also a welcome signal of legislative intent. The Act addresses questions that will only grow in importance as the proportion of a deceased person's estate that exists in digital form continues to increase.

Lessons from the Globe

The Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA) in the United States provides a comprehensive framework for the management of digital assets by fiduciaries striking a balance between the interests of legal heirs and the privacy expectations of the deceased. It draws a distinction between two categories of digital material: the content of electronic communications which include the actual messages, photographs, documents, and the catalogue which is the metadata, account identifiers, subscriber information. Access to content requires either the user's prior consent or a specific court order. Whereas the access to the catalogue is available to a personal representative as a matter of course subject to production of a death certificate and letters of appointment.

The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof (German Civil Code)) in 2018 (27.08.2020 – III ZB 30/20) held that legal heirs must have access to the deceased's digital accounts on the same terms as the deceased themselves, applying the doctrine of universal succession with characteristic thoroughness. The Court ruled that the account like a diary or private letters was an asset of the estate, and inheriting parents must be given direct access to the account of their deceased daughter, whereby the possibilities of active usage can be largely excluded, and as such specified inheritance rights within the digital. Facebook's argued that confidentiality obligations under the German Telecommunications Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) stood in the way however the Court was of the opinion that the heirs do not qualify as "third parties" for the purposes of telecommunications secrecy, and the GDPR does not apply to deceased persons. (The GDPR does not apply to the personal data of deceased persons as the regulation explicitly protects only living individuals, rights such as data access, erasure, and correction cease to exist upon death.)

For many people in earlier times, their photographs, their correspondence, their financial records and the most intimate expressions of their inner lives were locked away in drawers and secret boxes and envelopes. However, now they exist in servers maintained by American technology corporations operating under Californian law. The law of succession cannot remain indifferent to this reality. The Gandhinagar Court has taken a first important step. It is now for Parliament to follow with legislation that is clear, comprehensive, and reflective of the genuine complexities involved. The dead do not log out. It is now for Parliament to follow with legislation that is clear, comprehensive, and reflective of the complexities involved.

Based on CMA No. 17/2026, Civil Miscellaneous Application, 3rd Additional Senior Civil Judge, Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Order pronounced 05.05.2026. Case received 21.01.2026. References to statutory provisions and judicial precedents are drawn from the court record and are cited for analytical purposes only. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.