SREENIVASAN Vs. KIRUBAI AMMAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition by one K. Srinivasan for setting aside the order of the Sub divisional Magistrate, Tirupathur, in M. C. No. 72 of 1954, holding him to be the father of a male child and a female child' born to P. W. 1, married woman, whose husband, P. ,w. 3, Is still alive, and the marriage between whom has not been dissolved, and erdering him to pay maintenance at Rs. 6 per month for each of those children from the date of the petition and also to pay P, W. 1 costs or Rs. 15.

(2.) THE facts. are rattier extraordinary P. W; 1, Kirubai. Animal, is an Indian christian lady aged 32 and a school mistress by profession. Her husband, asseryatham, P. W. 3, aged 65, is also an Indian Christian and a school master by profession. According to P. W. 1, she married P. W. 3, Asser-vatham in or about 1936, and delivered two male children and a female child to him. She stated that the petitioner, Srintvasan, who was then a constable attached to tirupattur police station, used to visit her husband and that very soon he contracted illicit intimacy with her. He had systematic sexual inter-course with her for years without the knowledge of P. W. 3. Then some people told P. W. 3 about the situation. P. W. 3 suddenly returned to his house one day and found the petitioner and P. W. 1 together. ' When he protested, the petitioner, who was then a police constable (he is said to have been since dismissed) gave him a sound beating, and drove him out of his own house. P. W, 3 wanted, to take at least the three children he had got by P. W.

(3.) P. W. 1 refused to give him the three children. So, he-left the house early in 1949, and swore that he never had any more sexual intercourse with P. W. 1, though he admitted that after a pancbayat in 1950 he went and lived in the same house with P. W. 1 for a month or so. The petitioner was said to be continuously living with P. W. 1 after her husband was driven, out in 1949 and to have had systematice and exclusive intercourse with her. p. w. 1 stated that he was her sole paramour, and she was his sole concubine, from 1949 till 1954, when this petition was filed. According to her, the petitioner ceased to be a constable and took to some beedi business and was earning some Rs. 200 per month, but he was not willing to maintain her and her two children one of whom was a, male child, and another was a female child; the third child she bore to him, a male child, having died. She said that she had to bring this petition as the Panchayat convened by her did not effect any satisfactory settlement. 3. P. W. 1 examined her husband, P. W. 3, on her behalf to show that though her marriage with him continued undissolved, he had no sexual intercourse with her after he was driven out of his house by the petitioner in 1949, and that three children were born to P. W. 1 thereafter through the petitioner alone. P. W. 3 stated that the two children to Whom maintenance was awarded, that is, the last two children born to P. W. 1, were not born to him. He said that it was because his three children by P. W. 1 (the first three ones) were living with P. W. I and the petitioner and were in distress that he had come to the court to depose on behalf of P. W. I. The petitioner stated that he had nothing to do with P. W. 1, that it was false to say that he was" keeping P. w. l exclusively, as his concubine from 1949 to 1954, and that three children, two of whom were surviving, were born to him. The lower court disbelieved the petitioner's story, and passed orders as stated above.