USHARANI PRADHAN Vs. BRAJAKISHORE PRADHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) "A home with a loving and loyal husband and wife is the supreme setting in which children can be reared in love and righteousness and in which the spiritual and physical needs of children can be met."

(2.) It is the case of the respondent-husband that he married the appellant on 22.05.1991 in accordance with the caste, custom and rites and both of them stayed together as husband and wife and out of the wedlock, they were blessed with a daughter and a son. It is the further case that since the appellant was interested in political activities, she neglected the family and she used to return back home in the late hour of the night. Even though the respondent raised objection but the appellant did not bother about the same. She was not preparing food for her family members and behaving very badly with her husband and even gone to extent of instituting false police cases against him for which he was taken into custody. The appellant left her in-laws' house on 07.03.2007 and started residing at another place. After desertion of the appellant for a period of more than two years, the respondent instituted a divorce proceeding on the ground of cruelty and desertion.

(3.) On being noticed, the appellant appeared and filed her written statement and denied the averments made in the divorce petition. She put forth a case that after her maternal aunt expired giving birth to a female child, she and her husband adopted that child as their own daughter but when both of them were blessed with a daughter and son, the respondent lost interest in the adopted child and pressed the appellant to hand over the child back to her father. As the appellant did not agree to such proposal of her husband, there was dissention between the couple and for that reason the respondent started taking liquor and assaulting the appellant mercilessly causing serious injuries for which she instituted G.R. cases. The respondent also started maintaining distance from the appellant as a result of which their relationship deteriorated. It is her further case that after being mercilessly assaulted, she was driven out of her inlaws house with her adopted daughter for which she was constrained to take shelter in her paternal place at Jatani. The appellant denied the allegations leveled against her by the respondent regarding cruelty and desertion and it is her case that such allegations have been concocted just to get a decree of divorce and prayed to dismiss the divorce petition.