PAULAPPA RAMAPPA Vs. LEA HANGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition by one Paulappabin Ramappa Kalkoti who has brought a suit in the Court of the District Judge of Dharwar against his alleged wife one Lea Habgal who is described in the record as an idiot, by her guardian, the Nazir of the District Court of Dharwar.

(2.) The real question that we have to decide is whether or not this marriage was a marriage at all on account of the idiocy of the respondent at the time of the ceremony, in other words whether the petitioner is not entitled to have his decree- nisi made absolute upon the ground that the marriage was null and void from the beginning.

(3.) Now in the case which is the well-known case on the point, Elliott V/s. Gurr (1834) 2 Phill. 16, the distinction between what marriages are void and what are voidable is pointed out, and in dealing with void marriages the Judge says, "Civil disabilities such as prior marriage, want of age, idiocy and the like make the contract void ah initio-not merely voidable; these do not dissolve a contract already made, but they render the parties incapable of contracting at all; they do not put asunder those who are joined together, but they, previously hinder the junction and if any person under these legal incapacities come together, it is a meretricious, and not a matrimonial, union; and therefore no sentence of avoidance is necessary."