PARAMI RAMAYYA Vs. MAHADEVI SHANKARAPPA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This second appeal arises out of a suit brought by the appellant to recover arrears of maintenance from the respondents. Both the Courts below have found that the appellant's husband Ramayya died in February 1890, devising all his property by a will to the respondents. The will contains a provision that the respondents should maintain the appellant in case she lived with them, but that, if owing to disagreement she lived apart, they should give her Rs. 24 a year for her maintenance.

(2.) It is also found by the lower Courts that after the husband's death the appellant led for some time an unchaste life and gave birth to a child but that since then she has been chaste.

(3.) Upon these facts the respondents contended in the Court of first instance that, on account of the unchaste life which the appellant had led for some time after her husband's death, she had forfeited her right even to bare or starving maintenance. In support of that contention they relied on two decisions of this Court-Valu v. Ganga (1882) I.L.R. 7 Bom. 84 and Vishnu V/s. Manjamma (1884) I.L.R. 9 Bom. 108.