NARAYAN PRASAD CHOUBEY Vs. PRABHADEVI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is the plaintiff's appeal from the dismissal of his suit which he filed under section 10 of the Hindu Mamage Act, 1955, for a decree for judicial separation against the respondent.

(2.) THE appellant aged 32 years, is a lecturer in the Government Higher Secondary school, Sihora. Prabha Devi (respondent), aged 26 years, was married to him in may 1955 and the consummation ceremony (Gouna) took place in January, 1956. The couple lived at Sagar for about four months from January to April 1956, where after she went to her parents' house and returned after two months. She remained with her husband for another five months from July to November 1956. The contentions in the plaint were that the defendant quarrelled and disobeyed the plaintiff's mother whom he held in great esteem because she had brought him up after much sacrifice in adverse circumstances. The plaintiff reprimanded the defendant. She abused him and "misbehaved" and threatened to poison him. Thereafter, she once tried to poison the plaintiff's mother and also the plaintiff himself, but she did not succeed in her designs. She threatened to take poison herself. One day she poured kerosene oil on her own body and set fire to it. When she had somewhat re- covered, she went away with her parents to Hatta and did not come back to the plaintiff "to discharge her conjugal duty" since December 1956-in August 1960, she came to Sihora, where, the plaintiff was then posted, and publicly insulted him

(3.) THE defendant denied the adverse allegations against herself and alleged that all along she served the plaintiff and his mother as a devoted Hindu Wife, but the mother-in-law used to poison his ears and they both illtreated her; she tolerated all that. One day while she was cooking food, accidentally her clothes caught fire. Even before she could recover from the burns, the plaintiff took her to Damoh on 8-1-1957, called her father by a telegram and entrusting her to her father's custody went away to Jabalpur. The plaintiff did not give her a single pie during these five years: Dor allowed her to stay with him.