GOBIND RAM Vs. GULAB DEVI AND ANR.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a husband's appeal against a decree for divorce.

(2.) The Respondent -wife applied for divorce under Sec. 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act alleging that she had married the Appellant eight years before at village Khodri Mazri, in the Tehsil of Paonta, that thereafter they lived together as husband and wife and as a result of the marriage a daughter was born, but the child died when she was nine months old. It was asserted that the Appellant treated her with cruelty and turned her out of the house and there after she has been living with her parents. It was alleged that a year before the filing of the petition the Appellant married the Respondent Renuka Devi and has been living in adultery with her.

(3.) The petition was contested by the Appellant as well as by Renuka Devi. The Appellant admitted the factum of marriage with the Respondent -wife but asserted that within two and a half months of the marriage she left him to live with her parents and stayed there generally, visiting the Appellant occasionally for short periods only. There is an allegation that on one of these visits the wife committed theft of some articles, cash and ornaments and removed them to her parents' home. The Appellant denied the allegation of adultery with Renuka Devi, alleging that the latter had been living in his house as a maid servant only, in order to look after his two young children from an earlier wife. It is said that the wife is being financed in the litigation by one Ram Singh of Doiwala whom she proposes to marry after obtaining a divorce. Renuka Devi, in her reply to the petition, denied that she was married to the Appellant or was living in adultery with him, and supported the case of the Appellant that she was merely a maid servant living on the permises in order to look after the children.