GURDIAL SINGH Vs. SHANTI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This first appeal against the judgment of the learned Additional District Judge, Ambala dated May is, 1981 arises out a matrimonial cause instituted by the husband for the dissolution of his marriage with the respondent on the ground of cruelty and desertion. The material allegations made in the petition were that the parties were married in the year 1965-66 but Muklawa was taken in the year 1970; that they lived together upto the year 1973 but soon after the birth of the child in the year 1974 she left the matrimonial home; that after great persuation, she came back in the year 1976 and instead of staying in the matrimonial home lived in the house of Sarpanch Rachan Singh, an are enemy of the appellant, for 2. days and thereafter went to the house of Ram Karan in village Khuda where she lived for two months against the wishes of the appellant and that since then she has never returned to the matrimonial home in spite of repeated request.

(2.) The wife contested the petition and controverted all the allegations. She further pleaded that it was the appellant who left her in her village with a promise to take her back after 15 days but never came back; that a number of attempts were made to persuade the appellant to resettle the respondent in the matrimonial home but in vain and that she was still willing to live with the appellant. On the pleadings of the parties, the trial Court framed the following issues ;

(3.) The learned counsel for the parties did not dispute that the statements of the witnesses examined by the parties were hardly reliable and the case entirely depended on the statements of the parties themselves and the attending circumstances. To challenge the findings on both the issues, the learned counsel for the appellant in the first instance urged that the trial Court was belabouring under some misapprehension in observing that there was a conflict between the stand taken by the appellant in the petition and the statement made by him in the Court with regard to the period during which the respondent stayed with Rachan Singh and Ram Karan. The trial Court observed that according to his statement, she went to the house of Ram Karan in January 1976 and stayed there for two months. In the petition he stated that she stayed in the house of Rachan Singh in the month of January for 21 days. This, according to the learned trial Judge could not happen. But according to the learned counsel there was no such improbability and the respondent could very well stay in the earlier three weeks in the month of January in the house of Rachan Singh and then move to the house of Ram Karan in the same month The contention of the learned counsel appears to he well-merited. But even if this observation is ignored the case of the appellant is not strengthened in any manner.