PRITAM SINGH Vs. NASIB KAUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a rule obtained by the husband for setting aside the order made by a Magistrate 1st Class awarding a maintenance of Rs. 25 a month to Nasib Kaur and Rs. 5 to her child.

(2.) The case of woman who was the applicant under section 488 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was that she had been married to the respondent, the present petitioner Pritam Singh, for a period of seven or eight years and that she had been turned out by him and he had refused to give her any maintenance. In support of her case Mst. Nasib Kaur the petitioner, appeared as a witness and there also appeared her mother and several other persons who all deposed that she was married according to the chadar-andazi system to Pritam Singh. No question seems to have been put to any witness that if the previous husband is alive and the woman is abandoned she cannot legally remarry by chadar-andazi, and that is the sole question which has been debated before me.

(3.) The parties are Jats from Ludhiana District. According to the customs of the District a woman can remarry if she has been turned out by the husband. In the present case the evidence shows that the mother wrote to the first husband that if he did not take his wife back they would marry her off to somebody else and he went to the house of the mother-in-law and told her that the would not take her back and it was after this that Nasib Kaur, the petitioner (now respondent) married Pritam Singh.