NARAYAN GANESH DASTANE Vs. SUCHETA NARAYAN DASTANE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS second appeal raises novel and difficult points with regard to the relations between a modern educated husband and his wife in Hindu Society.

(2.) THE appellant in this appeal is the husband Dr. Narayan Ganesh Dastane. The respondent is his wife Mrs. Sucheta Narayan Dastaoe. They were married according to Vedic rites on May 13, 1956 in Poona. A daughter Shobha was born on March 11, 1957, a second daughter Vibhavari was born on March 20, 1959, and before the third daughter. Prabha was delivered, the husband and wife unfortunately fell out as it is undisputed that they have been living separately from each other since March 1961.

(3.) ON February 19, 1962, the appellant filed the petition from which the present second appeal arises. In that petition the appellant prayed in the first instance for a declaration annulling the marriage under Section 12 (1) (c) of the Hindu Marriage Act on the ground that the consent of the husband for the marriage was obtained by fraud. According to the husband, the wife was suffering from schizophrenia and she was treated in the Mental Hospital Yeravda some time in the year 1954; but schizophrenia was an incurable and dangerous form of unsoundness of mind, being hereditary and recurring; and these facts were suppressed from the husband before he consented for the marriage. The husband alleged that the parents and the relatives of the wife had known or ought to have known that the respondent's disease was diagnosed as schizophrenia before her marriage was settled with the petitioner and that they had deliberately concealed this fact from the petitioner and his father and deliberately gave them to understand and made them believe that the nature of the illness was simply a sunstroke and cerebral malaria. It is on this ground that the husband prayed for the decree of nullity of the marriage. In the alternative; the husband prayed for a decree of divorce under Section 13 (1) (iii) on the ground that the wife had been incurably of unsound mind for a continuous period of not less than three years immediately before the presentation, of the petition. Finally, in the alternative, the husband prayed for a decree for judicial separation under Section 10 (1) (b) alleging that the wife treated him with such cruelty as to cause a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the husband that it would be harmful or injurious for him to live with her.