G AMMANNA Vs. MRSEPSEY GIDION AMMANNA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This matter comes before the Court pursuant to Section 17, read with Section 3(1)(b) of the Indian Divorce Act. It is a petition by a husband seeking dissolution of his marriage from his wife on the ground of her adultery with an unmarried man. The adultery is said to have commenced in the year 1933 or 1934 and no proceedings were taken until the institution of the petition, out of which this reference arises, on September 20, 1946. The name of the adulterer is not mentioned in the petition and there is a prayer, for which no reason is manifested, that the petitioner may be excused from making the adulterer a counter- petitioner.

(2.) The only evidence which was given was that of the petitioner, who stated very little. Summarised it is the following. The wife left the petitioner 12 years before he gave evidence in 1946. She ran away with another Christian named G.S. Maben and the petitioner did not know where they were living. In 1936 he found in a copy of the South India Observer dated 5 March, 1936, an advertisement inserted by the wife that she had separated from the petitioner and a copy of the advertisement was exhibited. The petitioner concludes, in his evidence, that he wished for a formal separation from his wife and he did not wish her to be known as his wife; nor did he wish her to come back to him.

(3.) The advertisement states that Mrs. Epsey Gidion Ammanna then at the Nilgiris gave notice that she had separated with her child from the petitioner; she would not be responsible for any debts he had incurred and had decided her own course for the future.