JAGJAHIR PRASAD TIWARI Vs. SARASWATI DEVI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is the husband's appeal against the dismissal of his petition under Sec. 12(1) (a) and also under section 13(l)(ia) of the Hindu Marriage Act.

(2.) Parties were lawfully married according to the Hindu rites and customs in the years 1970 and the Gona ceremony had taken place in the year 1975. The appellant-petitioner was in service of the Army and used to come to his parental house on leave every year and practically during all this period when he used to be at home, the respondent-wife also used to remain in the same house. It is also not in dispute that there was no consummation of marriage any time. The respondent-wife is partly lame having some trouble with one of her legs and she is also dark complexioned.

(3.) According to the petitioner-husband (appellant), his wife viz., the respondent had such sex aversion that she did not allow coitus to the petitioner-husband despite the latter's genuine attempts in this regard, not only on the first night after their Gona ceremony when they lived together in the husband's parental home but also during each of all the following years when the petitioner used to come home on leave for a few days or a few months from his place of posting in the Army. In view of the wife's continuous refusal for sexual intercourse, the appellant-husband had no choice but to feel convinced that the wife was impotent and it was for this reason that she had shown her repugnance to sexual intercourse. The husband, therefore, claimed the annulment of marriage by decree of nullity on the said ground and in the alternative, claimed dissolution of marriage by a decree of divorce on the ground of his being treated with cruelty by his wife. The respondent-wife denied all the allegations levelled against her by the petitioner-husband in his petition. According to her, she was always ready and willing for co-habitation and it was the husband who always drove her away from his room expressing his abhorance for her.