SIRI RAM Vs. NARINI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The facts giving rise to this revision may briefly be stated. Smt. Naraini, wife of Siri Ram (petitioner in this Court), approached the Nyaya Panchayat at Chandpur, Parnaga and Tehsil Sadar District Bilaspur, for maintenance against her husband under section 488, Criminal Procedure Code. The Panchayat is stated to have made some order of which the parties before me have not cared to produce a copy in this Court. But be that as it may, a Full Bench of the Nyaya Panchayat on April 7, 1965, made an order directing Siri Ram to pay a sum of Rs. 80.00 per month to Smt. Naraini on the condition that she lives in the house of her in-laws and not in that of her parents.

(2.) Against the order of the Full Bench of the Nyaya Panchayat, Siri Ram preferred a revision in the Court of the Magistrate 1st Class (T. O.), Bilaspur, under section 93 of the Himachal Pradesh Panchayat Raj Act. That Court allowed the revision and dismissed the application presented by Smt. Naraini under section 488, Criminal Procedure Code. It appears that in the meantime the Judicial Commissioner's Court ruled in Dhiana v. Smt. Ayodhia, (Criminal Reference No. 20 of 1965) that orders made under section 488, Criminal Procedure Code, were not revisable under section 93 of the Himachal Pradesh Panchayat Raj Act. The legal position having been so declared by the Court of the Judicial Commissioner, Smt. Naraini again approached the Magistrate's Court with a prayer that the previous order of the learned Magistrate dated November 30, 1965, was a nullity and should, therefore, be ignored and the order made by the Full Bench of Nyaya Panchayat be revived. It may be pointed out that after the earlier order of the learned Magistrate dated November 30, 1965, proceedings under section 488, Criminal Procedure Code. were actually initiated in the Court of the Magistrate and it is in the course of these proceedings that this application was made. The learned Magistrate 1st Class on January 27, 1967, allowed Smt. Naraini's prayer and declared that the application under section 488, as initiated in the Court of that Magistrate, did not lie and rejected the same. Siri Ram then approached the Court of the Sessions Judge, Simla, with an application for revising the order of the learned Magistrate dated January 27, 1967. This application was rejected by the learned Sessions Judge on November 9, 1967, in a fairly exhaustive and detailed order. According to the learned Sessions Judge, the order of the learned Magistrate dated January 27, 1967, reviewing the earlier order of November 30, 1965 was not tainted with any jurisdictional infirmity and indeed that order rightly declared the earlier order to be without jurisdiction in view of the decision of the learned Judicial Commissioner in Dhiana's case.

(3.) It is against this order of the learned Sessions Judge that the present revision has been presented in this Court.