Osho's fake will
For 23 years after Osho left his body on Jan 19 1990, not a word or hint of "Osho's will" was known anywhere in the sannyas community at-large. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, it appeared in a European court case, in a dispute over the European Community trademark "Osho". The circumstances were as follows:
In 1991, Osho International Foundation (OIF) in Zürich started registering Osho's name as a trademark in various European countries, ostensibly to protect the name Osho against "abuse", ie supposedly unauthorized use by non-sannyasins and "enemies" of Osho.
As the program developed, it became apparent that enforcement of this trademark -- in parallel with enforcement of copyright, see also Trademarks and copyright -- was as much if not more focused on friends and lovers of Osho, as a way of maintaining an ever-narrower vision of Osho's legacy.
It was inevitable that some pushback would happen, and so it came to pass that Osho Lotus Commune e.V., operator of Osho Uta meditation centre in Köln, filed an application to cancel the trademark in Europe.
On June 8 2013, OIF's lawyers submitted some documents as part of that court case, including a sworn affidavit by Philip Toelkes (Sw Prem Niren) of the OIF legal team, and a "last will and testament" supposedly signed by Osho on October 15th, 1989. It cannot be over-emphasized that the existence of such a document had not been known or even dreamed of in the previous 23 years since Osho left his body.
How credible can this will be? Let's see ....
Niren's statement
Niren's statement consisted of many numbered paragraphs and one "exhibit", the purported will. It was dated June 4 2013 and can be viewed in toto among Osho Tapoban's pages on Issuu, the document storage site. Relevant here are items 1, 2, 24, 25 and 26, plus the image of the will.
Community Trade Mark Registration
No 1224831 OSHO in Classes 41 & 42
In the name of Osho International
Foundation ("OIF") and
Application for Invalidity No 5063
thereto by Osho Lotus Commune e.V.
(“Applicant")
Second Supplemental Witness Statement
I, Philip Toelkes, also known as Prem Niren, hereby declare that:
1. All the statements made herein are true and from my personal knowledge and recollection. Where I have made statements from another source, I have identified that source and believe the facts to be true. I am competent to make this witness statement. My address is [provided but not needed in the wiki context].
2. Scope of statement. This statement responds to questions raised by Lotus in its brief of January 4, 2013, and mischaracterizations of the documents of rights transfer and US copyright, contract and intellectual property. It will not restate the facts set forth in my earlier statements.
[ .... ]
24. Osho's Last Will & Testament negates Lotus' contentions re invalidity of documents of transfer. Though Lotus' claims against the validity of the documents of transfer are shown to be against the applicable law and without foundation, the vulnerability of any of the documents of transfer would not defeat Osho's clearly stated intention to transfer any and all property interests to the persons and entities he entrusted with his work. Osho left a Last Will & Testament, which was created to address the possibility that any of the earlier transfers would not be effective to divest him of all property interests, as had been his stated intention.
25. A true copy of Osho's Last Will & Testament, ("Osho's Will") executed on October 15, 1989, shortly before his death, a copy of which is provided herewith as Exhibit 4, clearly stated again his intention to transfer any and all property rights or interests he had to OIF. His will devises "all right, title and interest on any nature in any and all property including but not limited to all ownership, publishing or related rights, to all my work...in any form..." The breadth of the bequest is clearly sufficient to transfer any and all rights to use of his name and likeness, as well as all of his work.
26. Authentication of Will. I drafted the Will, and witnessed Osho's execution thereof, in the presence of the signing witnesses, as can be seen on the face of the document. The copy provided is a true and correct copy of the Will, and the signatures thereon were made by the persons so identified and were made on the date indicated on the document. Osho asked questions about the legal effect of the document prior to his execution thereof, and was unquestionably mentally alert and in full possession of his faculties at the time of execution.
Thus spake Niren.
the graphologists' reports
As can be imagined, this purported Last Will caused a lot of excitement, consternation and just plain WTF. Suspicions were aroused among many sannyasins, for the same reasons that Osho's fake adoption raised suspicions: that this is convenient, and where has this doc been all these years? Among certain sannyasins, the Hunt was on, looking deeply into any and all of Osho's old signatures.
Possibly the first to notice that Osho's signature in this will was VERY similar to that in a letter were Sw Chidananda and Ma Yoga Videh. That letter he wrote before 1976, or latest in 1976. As it happens, they found it not squirreled away in a drawer in Pune, but displayed on the back cover of one of Osho's books, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5.
At any rate, they were the first to commission a professional graphologist, an expert in handwriting analysis, to examine the the two signatures. That graphologist, Nicole Ciccola of Bologna Italy, submitted her report on Oct 13 2013. It can be viewed at another of Tapoban's pages stored at Issuu.
In her report, Ciccola cites a graphological text, L'indagine grafica, by Orlando Sivieri, pub 1967 by Cedam, Padova: "The perfect matching of words or groups of letters is undoubtedly the most incontrovertible evidence of a fake, since nobody, as they write, can repeat the movements that produce his/her handwriting in such an an absolutely identical way, in the same order, with the same sequence, the same rhythm ... Even more so for signatures. Anyone can try to write his/her own signature as many times as s/he wants; s/he will never find any which, placed on top of another one, perfectly repeats the lines in the sign, spacing, etc".
Two more graphologists from India were also engaged and submitted reports. The first, NR Parik of Aurangabad, has enlarged images of both signatures with a third image showing them superimposed. A summary page from his report, filed on Nov 6 2013, is seen at right. The full report is available also in Tapoban's pages.
The third graphologist's report, filed Nov 9 2013, is from Gaurav Kaushik of JK Consultancy in New Delhi. A pdf version can be found online among Osho Uta's records of the event. Kaushik also testifies that the two signature images when superimposed are seen to be identical, and adds that the Will signature "appears to be drawn slow in execution, is tremerous [sic] in nature and has a defective line quality. Whereas [the 1976 signature] is freely written, shows normal consistency and shows genuine line quality".
aftermath?
This section still under construction, awaiting research.
So how did this story play out? After eight years it seems there is no resolution in the Indian criminal courts and in 2017 the EU general court upheld OIF's trademark. Stay tuned ... 
