GOPALDEO Vs. RATNI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE applicant Gopaldeo Raghvi applies for revision of an order of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Saoner, dated 22nd May of this year, ordering him to pay certain arrears of maintenance allowance to the non-applicant, his wife Mt. Eatni. The latter woman obtained an order in her favour on 10th October 1923, and she had, in due course, applied for payment of the allowance for three months from 10th December 1927. The applicant, as on previous occasions, once more raised the contention, hitherto unsuccessful, that the non-applicant was living in adultery and it is undoubtedly true that, about 8th March she had advanced some seven months in pregnancy but says that she had meanwhile had intercourse with her husband. The lower Court, after a careful survey of the evidence, has disbelieved the contention of the applicant that she was living in adultery with one Pandya. Mahar, and his review of that evidence is in my opinion, unexceptionable. I agree with the Magistrate that, if there were truth in this allegation Pandya would undoubtedly, when accused, have attempted to save himself at the expense of the non-applicant. Even, however, if I assume that the non-applicant's present pregnancy was the result of a single act of adultery, which is the utmost extent I can go to in favour of the present applicant on the evidence on record, I cannot see that the applicant's case at present is much advanced.

(2.) I have been referred to a decision of the Madras High Court in Ponnayee v. Periya Mooppan [1908] 31 Mad. 185 in which Benson and Miller, JJ., were not prepared to interfere with the discretion exercised by a Magistrate in refusing to grant the maintenance allowance because the applicant there had been guilty of adultery with a low caste man and had been outcasted in consequence. That decision appears to me quite inapposite in the present case. I am not concerned with the order of maintenance which has been passed long ago. Before that order can be disturbed, the applicant has to satisfy the Court that his wife has, under Sub-section (5), Section 488, Criminal P.C. become disentitled to the continuance of the allowance, and this he has most certainly not done in the present case, His attempt to dispute the payment of the arrears seems only one more vexatious effort to avoid a responsibility which has already been imposed upon him in the previous proceedings.