MUHAMMAD RUSTAM ALI KHAN Vs. HUSAINI BEGAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal arises out of a suit brought by the plaintiff Muhammad Rustam Ali Khan against his wife for restitution of conjugal rights. The plaintiff is the son of Khwaja Muhammad Khan, a Nawab of Dholepur, and was married to the defendant Husaini Begam, who is the daughter of a wealthy resident of Moradabad, now deceased, on the 2 November, 1877. At the time of the marriage the plaintiff's father agreed to give the defendant Rs. 500 a month for pin-money. The plaintiff and the defendant lived together from the year 1883 up to the year 1896, when she left her husband and went to her father's house on the ground, as she alleges, of her husband's misconduct. She subsequently sued her father-in-law for arrears of the monthly annuity, agreed to be paid to her, up to 1901, and obtained a decree in the terms of a compromise. Her father-in-law failing to pay the annuity after the date of this decree, a suit was instituted by the defendant against him for arrears of it, from the 1 of May 1901 to the 31 of October 1903. The Court below dismissed her suit, but upon appeal to this Court the decision of that Court was reversed and a decree passed in her favour.

(2.) During the pendency of that suit, the suit which has given rise to this appeal was instituted. In his plaint the plaintiff makes serious charges against his wife, alleging not merely that she had become immoral, but that she had actually committed adultery and was at the time, as a consequence of that adultery, pregnant. The following IS the allegation in paragraph (6) of the claim: "Although her parents are dead, yet the defendant lives alone at Moradabad, where there is no near relative of hers who may look after and take care of her. She wanders about wherever she likes and has become immoral. Moreover, she has now became pregnant by adultery." It is a significant fact that it only occurred to the husband to institute a suit for restitution of conjugal rights when the wife had taken legal steps to recover her arrears of annuity from his father. And it is also significant that he should desire to resume connubial relations with a person in the condition in which he alleges his wife to be.

(3.) In her defence the defendant avers that owing to the enmity subsisting between her and the plaintiff she has strong apprehension of danger to her life. She further alleges acts of immorality on the part of her husband, and that owing to pressure exercised by his father he had shamelessly charged her with adultery. She further states that she has what she describes as magnificent houses of her own in the city of Moradabad, and that she is willing that her husband should live with her in that city as he formerly did or arrange for a separate house at Moradabad. She charges in answer to the suit that it was brought in consequence of the institution of the suit for arrears of pin-money.