GURCHARAN KAUR Vs. GURSHINDER SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The parties were married on 13-5-1967. On 1-8-1973, the wife got an ex parte decree for judicial separation. In December, 1979. the husband applied for restitution of conjugal rights. The wife filed a written statement wherein she pleaded that she had already obtained a decree for judicial separation and she clearly gave out that it was impossible for her to live with the husband although she put the entire blame for this on the husband. In view of the wife's stand that she was not at all prepared to live; with the husband, the petition for restitution of conjugal rights was got dismissed in default and sometimes thereafter on 4-9-1980, the husband filed the present petition for divorce on the plea that since the passing of the decree for judicial separation, the parties have neither lived together nor cohabited. In reply to this, the wife took a somer-sault and pleaded that she had been living with her husband and is still prepared to live with him. On the contest of the parties, the following issues were framed :-

(2.) After evidence was led, the Court below by order dated 9-12-1981, came to the conclusion that the parties did not resume cohabitation since the passing of decree for judicial separation and consequently granted divorce. This is wife's appeal.

(3.) After hearing the learned counsel for the parties at length, I am of the view that there is no scope for interference with the well considered judgment of the Court below. The wife is a teacher in a village school whereas the husband is in Army. Out of the wedlock, there has been no child. The plea now set up by the wife that she had been living with the husband and cohabiting with him since after the passing of the decree for judicial separation, has to be decided not from her oral statement in Court made now or on the plea raised in the written statement filed in Court now, but from her plea taken in the written statement which she filed in response to the petition for a decree for restitution of conjugal rights which was filed by the husband as late as December, 1979. A copy of that written statement is Exhibit A. I on the record. A reading of the same clearly shows that the wife's categorical stand was that since tote passing of the decree for judicial separation, they have never lived together and that she was not prepared to live with him. It is true that the blame or all this was put by her on her husband, but the fact remains that till the filing of the written statement in the proceedings for restitution of conjugal rights, the parties had neither lived together nor cohabited against the passing of the decree for judicial separation. No evidence has been brought on the record that since the filing of the written statement Exhibit A.1 the parties started living together and cohabited. Her general plea and evidence also of the general nature, is that since the passing of the decree for judicial separation they had been living together and cohabited. Accordingly, I am of the view that the Court below was perfectly right in coming to the conclusion that since the passing of the decree of judicial separation, the parties neither lived together nor cohabited and the plea now raised is false and so also her statement.