Salil Kumar Datta, J. - (1.) This is an appeal by the husband against the judgment and decree passed by the Additional District Judge, 24-Parganas allowing the wife's application for a decree of divorce.
(2.) The material allegations of the wife in her petition for divorce are as follows: (a) The parties were married on 21st January, 1945, under the provision of the Special Marriage Act (Act III of 1872). It appears that the age of the wife at the time of marriage was about 21 years while the age of the husband then was 34 years. After marriage the wife came to reside at 80/D, Lansdown Road, Ballygunge, being the place of husband's residence. Within a few days, the wife found the husband cold and indifferent and sexually abnormal and perverse. Shortly thereafter, the husband left for United Kingdom on business for about three months and the wife became busy with her M. A. examination which was held in August, 1945. During the period from marriage till September, 1945, except the sojourn in foreign land, the wife found the husband cold and indifferent towards her and the husband would flare up on occasional slight protest made by the wife at his said coldness and indifference. (b) After her examination was over, a period of unspeakable misery and agony, both physical and mental, for the wife ensued as the husband was too busy with the East Bengal Club and its young members which appeared to be the be-all and end-all of his life, avoiding the wife's company altogether. The husband would go straight from his so-called business to the club and return therefrom during late hours of night; he would then talk with his mother till late in the night returning to his room after ascertaining that the wife had fallen asleep. The occasional remonstrance by the wife and her rare expressions of desire for his company and to have a child used to upset the husband so much that he would become rude to her stating that she was too ugly to attract him. Even on such occasion he would strike her and at times strike her hard. For the wife the days rolled on in un-happiness, agony, and frustration and desperation due to the rude and cruel conduct and misbehaviour of the husband who thus practically deserted her although living in the same house. The husband's mother sided with the husband and reprimanded her as over-sexy modern, girl and selfish. Her father-in-law was reasonable in his attitude to her though he had no freedom of action and he died in 1954. The feeling between the wife and the husband became highly strained due to the attitude of the husband, who, to get rid of her, suggested that she should go to the United Kingdom for higher studies and that her education would make up her lack of beauty and the husband would be able to present her in society with his head high. For considerable time prior to the wife's starting for England she used to visit her parents then staying at Lahore and Jaipur and stay with them for long periods and beseeched them to allow her to stay with them in order that there might be an end of her miserable existence in the husband's house. (c) The wife sailed for England in August, 1948, and got herself admitted in the London School of Economics for her Ph. D. Degree in geography. She stayed in the United Kingdom up to December, 1951 throughout except two visits in India. During the visits the wife found the husband more cruel, apathetic, negligent and cold and even her letters from England to the husband were found unopened in his desk. After her return from England there was occasional discussion by her parents with the husband for her stay with them, but all such discussions ended in physical violence to the wife and rude and rough behaviour to her parents. (d) in August, 1952, the husband's family moved to their own house at 23, Lake Place, Tollygunge and the wife, with her parents living at Jaipur, had to reside at the said Lake Place house. The wife spent her days in frustration and agony and would have suffered a complete mental break-down but for a job as Lecturer in Geography she could secure in the University of Calcutta in the latter part of 1952, and she realized that she would have to live in a frustrated married life. She dedicated her life to her work in the said University and began to observe complete home reticence and indifference at the matrimonial home and apparently a defiant attitude to the husband. As a result of this, there was, in the husband's house, no more of physical torture and violence and mental shock to her. The wife realized that the husband wanted her to live elsewhere and that the husband had developed a feeling of hatred and abhorrence for her. In the same house, thus, they became strangers to each other and during the years of 1952, 1953 and major part of 1954 the wife was living her routine life, and each of them having his or her own way. (e) in the early part of 1954, the wife's father was transferred from Cuttack to Mandalay and on his way to Mandalay at the wife's request he rented a room in April, 1954 at 67, Raja Basanta Roy Road, P. S. Tollygunge, leaving there, the wife's mother and sister in order that they might occasionally give her company and console her. Thereafter the wife's father secured a fiat at 51-M, Keyatala Road, Calcutta from November, 1954. By this time the wife made up her mind to desert the husband forever and from November, 1954, began to live with her mother and sister at the said flat since they had moved there. (f) in May, 1955, the wife's father came down to Calcutta and on the morning of May, 16, 1955, he went to the husband's residence with a view to coming to some sort of understanding about the future course of life of the wife, whereupon the husband threatened the wife's father with violence and dragged him, so to speak, at the house at Keyatala Road. In the course of heated discussion held in the flat, the husband gave two alternatives to the wife --namely to sue for a divorce or to give up her employment in the University and to go to Mandalay with her father. To the said proposal the wife gave out that she could not think of divorce as her young sister was not then married nor could she ruin her career by giving up her service. At this the husband became mad with rage and struck the wife with a cricket umpire's stick which he had carried with him and when the wife's father and sister tried to prevent the stick being used against the wife, they were also struck by him repeatedly. The neighbours rushed in and came to their rescue and finally the husband was sent to Tollygunge Police Station where the wife and her father and sister made statements. The wife in the circumstances charged the husband with desertion and cruelty and apart from other marital offences, she even declared in her petition that during the first four years of married life, the husband did not cohabit with the wife for more than six occasions and that too about 3 years after marriage. The wife further stated that from November 1954, apart from the Incident of May 1955, she had no contact with the husband. There are the usual averments of absence of collusion and connivance between the parties.
(3.) On the above allegations, the wife came to Court praying for a decree of dissolution of her marriage with the husband under Section 27 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954, (Act XLIII of 1954) her application having been filed on October, 3, 1958.;