K OMPRAKASH Vs. K NALINI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a husband's appeal preferred to this Court against an order made by the Chief Judge, City Civil Court, Hyderabad dismissing his application filed under S.13 of the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 for dissolving his marriage with his respondent-wife. The petitioning husband is the respondent's maternal uncle. This appears to be a case of familiarity breeding contempt rendering attraction of novelty absent. The parties are Hindus and their marriage took place on 19th Feb., 1978. But ever thereafter, they do not appear to have lived for long happily together. The husband alleged in his petition filed for divorce that his wife was in love with one S even prior to her marriage with him and that she was living on terms of illicit intimacy with the said S both before and after her marriage. The petitioner alleged that the wife admitted her illicit relationship with S to him. The husband alleged that he was satisfied that the respondent-wife was trying to snap her relations with him somehow. The respondent had been living away from her husband and with her parents from Jan. 1980, without ever visiting the petitioner except once in the month of July 1980 for just five minutes when the petitioner lost his father. The husband alleged that since January 1980 the parties were living apart and that there was no possibility of reconciliation between them and that the efforts made by the elders for bringing reconciliation between them had failed. The husband also alleged that the petitioner and the respondent agreed for having a divorce by mutual consent and that a draft petition in that behalf was also prepared for being submitted to the Court. The husband alleged that as the respondent went back upon that agreement, he had no other go except to file the application for divorce.

(2.) On the other hand the respondent in her counter blamed the husband for the unhappy state of affairs existing between them. She said that it was the husband who was causing inexpressable agony and distress to her. The wife asserted that the husband was making against her reckless allegations of illicit intimacy with the abovesaid S. She disowned love with S. In her turn, she imputed illicit intimacy of her husband with a Gujarati lady and said that because of that relationship, the petitioner was seeking divorce with her. The respondent denied as ever having admitted her relationship with S. But the respondent did not deny the fact that they were living apart from January, 1980.

(3.) The above petition for divorce was filed some time in the year 1982. It dragged on for over an year. When the matter came up for trial, the lower Court framed the necessary issues and examined three witnesses for the husband and two witnesses for the wife and marked Exs. A.1, A.2, A.3, A.4 and A.5 documents. Exs. A. 2 and A. 4 are the letters said to have been written by the abovementioned S to the respondent-wife.