SOMNATH DE Vs. SWETA DEY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) -The present appeal has been filed by the husband/appellant impugning a decree, of divorce passed against him on the ground of cruelty at the behest of the wife respondent No. 1. The case, inter alia, as sought to be made by the wife respondent No. 1 was to the effect that a girl aged about 17 known as Moni, who was impleaded as respondent No. 2, used in stay in the self same flat where the couple used to live. The husband used to drink occasionally and since she always refused to join him, the husband abused her in filthy language and also beat her mercilessly. The husband also perpetrated different acts of torture on her by giving her cigarette burns. One Saturday in September 1977 when the wife returned home at about 9 p.m. on account of her sudden indisposition, she found her husband dead drunk and the respondent No. 2 Moni was standing in the corner of the room almost in a naked state which prima facie suggested that there had been a sexual union in between the husband and Moni. Ultimately the wife was forcibly dragged to the bed and was about to be throttled by her husband but ultimately she was successful in saving herself by running out of the room. She averted that there was some illicit relationship in between her husband and the said respondent No. 2 Moni. On October 2, 1977 the wife was assaulted and driven out from the matrimonial home and since then, she had been living in the house of her father at Bangaon.

(2.) The husband contested the proceeding by denying almost all the allegations of ill treatment, cruelty or torture as sought to be made out by the wife and denied also his illicit relationship with the girl named Moni. It was specifically averred that since the wife used to work in the Calcutta Telephones and the husband was an employee of Reserve Bank, the household was looked after by the maidservant Moni. The service rendered by Moni being unsatisfactory she was ultimately discharged from service. It was the wife herself who left the matrimonial home on a holiday noon on the pretext of going to her ailing father at Bangaon and thereafter never submitted herself to the marital obligations.

(3.) The learned Judge disbelieved the story of the appellant's illicit relationship with Moni and also did not lay any credence on the evidence regarding physical assault and torture perpetrated by the husband on the wife. The learned Judge held that there was not much evidence on the point of actual physical cruelty committed by the husband upon the wife but she suffered extreme mental cruelty when she found that she was more or less a non-entity in the family and a girl who was an outsider was exercising "dominating influence there" and her husband "became very much attached to such a girl". The Trial Judge erroneously held that the wife had every reason to suspect some illicit relationship between her husband and Moni and if actually a young girl is induced from outside and is kept in the family as maidservant, the position becomes really intolerable for the wife. The learned Trial Judge on his own finding that no acts of adultery was actually proved in between the appellant and the said Moni, curiously landed himself in the realm of surmise when for the mere presence of Moni in the said flat he thought it amounted to a mental cruelty to the wife and on that ground passed a decree for divorce against the husband.