SUNIL KANTO NANDY Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE appellant has been convicted Under Section 497, Indian Penal Code, and -sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for five years. It is alleged that he committed adultery with Prakriti Chakravarty, who was the tingly wedded wife of the complainant, Narain "Chandra Chakravarty (P. W. 12) between January and December, 1959, as mentioned in the charge framed against the appellant, though in his judgment the learned Assistant Sessions Judge has wrongly mentioned the period of the charge as 'between June 1958 and January, 1960.

(2.) IT is admitted that the parties were the -original residents of Rajsahi, which is now in East Pakistan. The complainant was residing in his ;ancestral house and the appellant -was a medical jpractitioner there. IT is also not in dispute now that Prakriti, also known as Bulbul, was married to the complainant in Asarh of the year 1939 and two daughters were born of the marriage to the complainant, one is 1940 and the other in 1945. The appellant was the family physician of the complainant at Rajsahi. In 1948 after the partition of the Indian Sub-continent, the parties shifted to Bhagalpur where 'they lived in a, rented house to mohalla Bhikanpur. The appellant also lived in the same house at Bhagalpur. The complainant was carrying on, some business in connection with which he used to be mostly away from Bhagalpur during the years 1948 to 1953 and he used to leave his family under the care of the appellant.

(3.) THE appellant denied the charge and pleaded not guilty. His case is that the complainant had deserted his wife, and the appellant as a friend and well-wisher of the complainant's family had all the while been maintaining the complainant's wife and his two daughters and also bearing the expenses of the education of the two girls. THE further case of the appellant is that in September, 1953, he was transferred to Bettiah from where he was transferred to Monghyr in 1954, where the complainant used to write letters to his wife from time to time. In June, 1958, the appellant was transferred to Dumka where he had continued to maintain the wife and the two children of the complainant at his own cost. THE further case of the appellant is that from January, 1959 onwards some dispute had arisen between him and certain officers of the District Board of which the appellant was the Medical Officer. THE officers of the District Board, who were annoyed with the appellant, got the appellant falsely implicated in the present case which had been instituted against him with entirely false allegation alter he had been transferred from Dumka to Jamalpur in the month of January, 1960.