AMMINI Vs. KUTTAPPAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioner-wife claimed maintenance alleging desertion and cruelty. Trial magistrate found cruelty and awarded maintenance. Finding that cruelty was not made out, revisional court set aside the award.

(2.) Magistrate noticed that respondent husband, referred to the wife as a whore in some of his letters. This to him was cruelty. Sessions Judge thought otherwise. According to Sessions Judge the husband was keen to get back his wife, and consequent on her refusal to join him, in exasperation be used objectionable expressions in some letters. Sessions Judge noticed that the husband was entreating the wife to return to him, reminding her how happy they were together, and telling her how much he cared for her. Sessions Judge found that respondent-husband was unhappy at the lost of his child, which he thought was due to callousness of the wife and her relations in going to an incompetent doctor instead of going to a good hospital. In his letters he made it clear that he was willing to spend anything for her care and that of their child. It is seen from the letters, that the respondent was greatly disturbed in mind and the wife paid little heed to his advice. Husband appears to have told her that he intended to marry another woman, because she had forsaken him. Sessions Judge found that these were threats, employed by the husband to rouse the envy in the wife, and get her back.

(3.) Counsel for petitioner submits that revisional court is not justified in re-appreciating evidence and coming to a different conclusion. Counsel is right. But, that is not what the learned Sessions Judge did. Revisional court found that the magistrate did not appreciate the law relating to cruelty. According to her, Magistrate committed an illegality in approximating cruelty to use of vituperative language. Sessions Judge was justified in this view. The total situation, the realities of life, the social strata to which parties belong, the measure of refinement attained by them, and akin factors are relevant in viewing the question. Each age, and community have their ethos arid values. What would have been intemperate language in the Victorian age, would no longer be viewed the same in the closing decades of the 20th Century. Words which were taboo 50 years back, are common vocabulary today. What was indelicate in speech is today common parlance.