ALTAF HUSSAIN Vs. NASREEN ZAHRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE plaintiff Nasreen Zahra s suit for a declaration that she is unmarried and her marriage never took place with the defendant before the District Marriage Officer, Aligarh, was decreed by the 3rd Additional District Judge, by his judgment dated the 30th October, 1976. The defendant Altaf Hussain has filed this First Appeal.

(2.) THE plaintiff s case briefly stated, is as follows : She belongs to a highly respected family of Aligarh. She is unmarried and lives with her father. She was studying in the B. A. (Final) Class in the Abdullah Girls College, Aligarh and had discontinued her studies for about a year. She was never married with the defendant nor she ever signed the marriage register in token of the marriage with the defendant. The latter was known to her father and was a friend of her sister s husband. Farhatullah Khan. The defendant wanted to blackmail her father by defaming him and her also. He had sent a paigham to her father with a mala fide motive and when told that the defendant did not deserve to be married with the plaintiff on account of family status and position the defendant had threatened her father with dire consequences. He was an uneducated person and belonged to a family whose status was considerably lower than that of the plaintiff s family. Shri Zia A. K. Sherwani approached her father on 15th Nov., 1974 and he had informed her father that the defendant had arranged to secure a Marriage Certificate through Shri Sudhakar Pachori, Advocate and Marriage Officer, Aligarh and had also shown him the alleged Marriage Certificate. It was a forged document and did not bear her signature. Shri Zia A K. Sherwani had also threatened her father that the plaintiff would be forcibly taken away by the defendant. The defendant and his friends had conspired together to cast reflections on her character and conduct and this had constituted a serious danger to her reputation and damage for any future prospects of befitting marriage.

(3.) THE trial court framed the following issues :-