GUDA WILLIAM Vs. GUDA KARUNAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) It has always been the practice of this Court, since the passing of the Indian Divorce Act of 1869, to post and dispose of decrees sent up from the District Court for confirmation after notice to the parties without requiring the petitioner to appear and move for confirmation. I see no sufficient reason to depart from this practice, which appears to me to give effect to the intention of the Legislature. It was in the interest of poor suiters that jurisdiction in divorce was conferred upon District Judges instead of on a Central Divorce Court as in England, and it would be a restriction of the boon to require a petitioner who has obtained a decree in a District Court, to take proceedings for confirmation in the High Court. The mere appearance of the petitioner would be no protection against collusion which is guarded against by the other provisions of Section 17, and as regards the possibility of the parties having died or come together again subsequent to the decree of the District Court the serving of notice seems a sufficient safeguard.

(2.) As to the facts the petitioner has no doubt failed to prove the specific act of adultery shortly after the marriage on which he relied, besides which condonation has been proved. But with regard to the allegation that the petitioner was not the father of the infant born to the respondent in September 1913, the District Judge, who saw the witnesses, has accepted the evidence of witnesses who, if believed, in my opinion sufficiently prove non-access on the part of the petitioner and misconduct on the part of the respondent. The case really turns on whether the husband had access to his wife about the time the child was conceived. The parties had been separated some months before, when at the instance of the missionaries an effort was made to reconcile them. Plaintiff s 2nd witness speaks to going with the petitioner to her mother s house and finding her absent and to staying the night and their going over to Achutapuram, where she was keeping a night school for adult men as well as boys. There does not seem to have been any opportunity of access on that occasion, and the evidence, in my opinion, negatives anything of the kind. The fact of her having previously to this contracted a venerial disease which she did not accuse her husband of having given her and of her keeping the night school shows the sort of woman she was. I think the adultery is sufficiently proved and would confirm the decree. Ayling, J.

(3.) I agree. Sadasiva Aiyar, J.