Introduction
Gulab Mahagu Bawankule, an employee of the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, went missing on 1 September 2012. His employer kept him on its books as though he were still alive — through to a scheduled retirement in January 2015, retiral dues, and a monthly pension paid to his family. Nearly a decade later, his son sought a compassionate appointment, arguing his father should be treated as having died the day he vanished. The Supreme Court disagreed, and the reason traces directly to Section 111 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 (BSA).
This article covers Section 111's text, the October 2025 ruling that applied it to that exact dispute, and the sharp limit on what a seven-year absence actually proves.
111. Burden of proving that person is alive who has not been heard of for seven years.
When the question is whether a man is alive or dead, and it is proved that he has not been heard of for seven years by those who would naturally have heard of him if he had been alive, the burden of proving that he is alive is shifted to the person who affirms it.
Section 111 carries forward Section 108 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 without any change, confirmed against two independent bare-act sources.
What Seven Years of Silence Actually Proves
Section 111 does one narrow thing: once someone has gone unheard-of for seven years by the people who would naturally have heard from them, the burden flips — whoever now claims that person is still alive has to prove it, rather than the other side having to prove death. What it does not do is tell anyone when, how, or under what circumstances that person died. The presumption is confined strictly to the bare fact of death after the seven years have run; any more specific claim — a particular date of death, a particular cause — still has to be proved independently, by direct or circumstantial evidence.
The Commissioner, Nagpur Municipal Corporation v. Lalita: The Date Gap That Decided the Case
This exact distinction was central to The Commissioner, Nagpur Municipal Corporation & Ors. v. Lalita & Ors., decided by the Supreme Court on 29 October 2025 (Bench: Pankaj Mithal and Prasanna B. Varale, JJ.). A civil court had, in January 2022, decreed Gulab Bawankule to be dead — but that decree only recorded the fact of his disappearance; it did not fix any specific date of death. His son argued the declaration should relate back to the 2012 disappearance date, entitling him to a compassionate appointment as though his father had died in service that day.
The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning, reaffirming its earlier holding in LIC of India v. Anuradha, (2004) 10 SCC 131: a person who goes missing cannot be treated as dead from the date of disappearance, only from the point the seven-year silence under Section 108 IEA (now Section 111 BSA) is complete — and even then, only as to the fact of death, not its date. Because the Corporation had continued treating Bawankule as an employee through to his 2015 retirement, with his family accepting retiral dues and a pension on that basis, the compassionate-appointment claim premised on an earlier "date of death" could not stand.
A Practical Contrast
A woman's husband disappears during a trek in 2015 and is never found. If she seeks to remarry or claim a life insurance payout in 2023, Section 111 lets her establish the bare fact that he is presumed dead, since more than seven years of silence have passed among those who would naturally have heard from him. But if the insurance policy's payout depends on the exact date of death — say, a policy that lapsed on a specific date shortly before he vanished — she cannot simply rely on the seven-year presumption to fix that date; she would need separate evidence of when, within that window, death is more likely to have occurred.
Key Takeaways
- Section 111 BSA carries forward Section 108 IEA verbatim — confirmed unchanged across independent sources.
- Once seven years of unexplained silence are proved, the burden shifts onto whoever claims the missing person is still alive.
- The presumption reaches only the bare fact of death, never a specific date, time, or cause — those still require independent proof.
- The Commissioner, Nagpur Municipal Corporation v. Lalita (29 October 2025) confirms death cannot be presumed from the date of disappearance itself, only from when the seven-year period is complete, following LIC of India v. Anuradha, (2004) 10 SCC 131.
- Claims that hinge on a precise date of death — inheritance shares, insurance timelines, service benefits — need evidence beyond the presumption alone.
Conclusion
Section 111 offers a narrow, practical solution to an otherwise impossible proof problem — nobody can produce direct evidence of a death nobody witnessed — but Bawankule's case shows how strictly its narrowness is enforced: seven years of silence proves only that someone is presumed dead, never when. Chapter VII's descent through the burden-of-proof provisions continues next at Section 110, the mirror-image rule for someone known to have been alive far more recently.