BERYL GERTRUDE SADLER Vs. HARRY REGINALD SADLER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application by Enid Peychers, a married woman, for leave to intervene in a suit for dissolution of marriage brought by Beryl Gertrude Sadler against her husband Harry Reginald Sadler, the suit being based upon an allegation that on diverse and repeated occasions between October 1930 a September, 1931 and indeed between that date and the month of June 1932 the respondent Harry Reginald Sadler committed adultery with the present applicant.

(2.) It appears that so far as the respondent is concerned, the suit is undefended, he neither having entered appearance nor made any answer to the petitioner's allegations against him. The suit as an undefended suit appeared on the list before Buckland, J., on 3 July, but upon the case being called on, counsel for the petitioner drew the attention of the Court to the fact that by some inadvertence, if not negligence, the woman with whom adultery was charged, that is to say, the present applicant, had never been served with a certified copy of the pleadings containing the charges or with a notice that she was entitled to apply for leave to intervene in the cause as required by the provisions of Rule 9 of the rules made under Section 1(4), Indian and Colonial Divorce (Jurisdiction) Act, 1926. This matter once more brings into prominence the extraordinary anomaly and the glaring injustice which still exists as between the position of women charged with adultery where the suit is brought under the Indian and Colonial Divorce Jurisdiction Act and that of a woman charged with adultery in a suit brought under the provisions of the Indian Divorce Act of 1869 I have on a number of occasions pointed out that owing to what I consider the very unfortunate decision in the case of Ramsay V/s. Boyle (1903) 30 Cal 489, in a wife's suit for divorce against her husband brought under the Indian Divorce Act of 1869, the Court has no power to allow the alleged adulteress to intervene, whereas in the case of a suit brought by a wife against her husband under the Indian and Colonial Divorce (Jurisdiction) Act, 1926, the alleged adulteress can intervene by reason of the provisions of Rule 9 made under Section 1(4) of that Act.

(3.) The startling and gross injustice of the position is at once apparent when it is observed that the right of a woman charged with adultery to intervene in a wife's suit for dissolution of marriage and to defend her honour by denying: and rebutting the charges made against her depends not in any way upon her own nationality or her individual rights or personal status but entirely upon the nature of the domicile of the wife petitioner which, in effect, means the domicile of the husband respondent. Therefore the position is this: that if it so happens that Mrs. A brings a suit for dissolution of marriage against Mr. A and chooses to charge Mrs. or Miss B with having committed adultery with Mr. A, B cannot intervene in the suit but must remain outside powerless and helpless whatever foul allegations may be made against her, unless it happens to be the case that Mr. A is not domiciled in India but in England or Scotland.