SIDDESSURY DASSEE Vs. JANARDAN SARKAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a suit by a childless Hindu widow claiming arrears of maintenance and future maintenance out of certain property, which the defendant has inherited from his father and her father-in-law. The defendant is a brother-in-law of the plaintiff. The plaintiff about the year 1870 married one Nabadip, who died in 1872. Nabadip and the defendant were the sons of one Buddun, who died in 1888, and the defendant was his heir and inherited his ancestral property. There is no question as to its having been self-acquired estate. There is some dispute as to what occurred after the death of Nabadip; The plaintiff says that she was a dependent member of Buddun's family up to the time of the death of the latter in 1888; that, for about two years after that she was supported by the defendant; that she was then turned out of her father-in-law's house, and that she now lives in her father's house.

(2.) The defendant says-that the plaintiff left Buddun s, that is her father-in-law's house, about two years after her husband's death; that would be about the year 1874; that she had received during Buddun's life all the property to which she was entitled, and that she ceased to be a dependent member of her father-in-law's family after she went to reside with her father and that she had separated from her husband's family.

(3.) There is a conflict of evidence upon these questions of fact, and upon the evidence I am disposed to take the view that the plaintiff left her father-in-law's house probably some two or three years after the death of her husband, and that she never returned to it afterwards. Looking to her age and to the circumstances of her husband's family this action on her part cannot be considered as blameworthy: at least this is the view taken by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the case of Raja Prithee Singh V/s. Rani Raj Koer (1873) 12 B. L. R. (P. C.) 238. The case is governed by the Bengal School of Law. The question we have to decide is whether, under these circumstances, the plaintiff is entitled to maintenance out of the estate, which has been inherited by the defendant from his father. The Court below decided that the plaintiff was not a continually dependent member of her husband's family, and that she did in fact sever herself from that family, and that she was not entitled either to past or future maintenance. Hence this appeal.