Roy who won a case in the Supreme Court in 1986 to struck down the Travancore Christian Succession Act (TCSA) which made applicable the Indian Succession Act (ISA) that give equal rights to sons and daughters to all, received the possession of her share of land last week.

"My daughter (Arundhati Roy) and son Lalit have told me that they were not interested in it. Now the proceeds from the cursed property worth Rs18 million will go to charity," Roy said. "We are glad that after nearly 50 years this saga of litigation has come to an end."

Talking to a group of reporters at her residence inside a 10-acre campus of the Pallikkodam School that she established on her own, she said she had given a power of attorney to her son to execute her decision.

"Neither me nor my elder sister Molly Joseph need my father's land. We have both been fighting for a principle-equality of women before the law," she said. "Women like me got justice after the apex court verdict more than two decades back. I had to wait another 26 years." 

In 1965, Roy was told to get out of a cottage in Ootty which had belonged to her father where she lived with her small children Arundhati, 3, and Lalit, 5, and she was told that according to the TCSA, "a daughter shall receive one-fourths the share of a son or Rs 5,000 whichever is less."

She was just back from Kolkatta after a failed marriage and struggling to meet both ends. She was able to retain the cottage, as the TCSA was not applicable in Tamil Nadu.

She then decided she would get equal right under the Indian Constitution and she would fight the humiliation heaped upon her and other women. A Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Supreme Court in 1984 and two years later the apex court passed the historic judgment.

All Indians are now governed by the Indian Succession Act which gives equal rights to sons and daughters. But a will written by the father overrides the law of the land which comes into effect only intestate succession.

The mother had a life estate which gave her right over all her husband's property till her death. She died in 2000 and after that her brother George Isaac resorted to innumerable adjournments and appeals to the Kerala High Court to prevent the partition but to no avail.

The litigation came to an end last week when a civil court in Kottayam assigned the property to her.

Isaac sold the ancestral house and half the property for Rs50mn. The remaining half is divided between the two sisters and their late brother John's wife who is a Canadian. "Today everyone should be happy. The land has now come into our possession with no further impediments," she said.

There were a few shops, which were demolished after the sisters got its possession. George was also present there to witness the demolition of the structures that he built.

"I told my brother that this is end of an era for me. He said it's just a beginning," she said.

At 77, and devoted to her school, which is one of the best in India, she says she has just started another legal battle for the common good. She has engaged a lawyer in New Delhi to file a petition in the Supreme Court to give strict strictures to civic councils on solid waste management.