PRASAD GARERI Vs. MTKESARI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in revision against an order of maintenance passed under Section 488, Criminal P.C.

(2.) On 18 May last, Mt. Kesari, the mother of two boys aged 6 and 3 from her husband Radha Gareri, filed a petition before the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Buxar, saying that during her husband's absence in Burma she had contracted illicit intimacy with his elder brother, Prasad Gareri, and thus given birth to a girl after her husband's return, and that she had been turned out of the house along with the children (the girl being then about a month old) and asking that she be given Rs. 15 a month as maintenance for the children from Radha and Prasad.

(3.) Upon this the then Sub-Divisional Magistrate called upon the two brothers to show cause why they should not pay Rs. 5 each as maintenance to her. Radha showed cause by means of a petition saying that he had been away in Burma for three years, that he had not turned his wife out, but that he was unable to live with her for fear of being ex-communicated and was too poor to pay maintenance; and he prayed that his own two children may be made over to him. Prasad said that he had been in Burma with his brother Radha, that in their absence Kesari had conceived through an unknown "person" at her naihar (father's house), that he had only come home on receipt of a telegram from Radha regarding the birth of the third child, that they asked the woman to give them the two boys of Radha and go back to her parents, and that she had left with the children and then filed her petition at the instance of their enemies. Curiously enough, Kesari admitted in her cross-examination in July that "Sheodhari and Girwardhari have made me file this petition against Prasad owing to their own grudge," and said that her husband was "an idiot."