- (1.) The marital the between the parties stands snapped by the impugned decree of divorce granted at the instance of the respondent-husband by the Additional District Judge, Sonepat, on the ground that the appellant had deserted him for more than two years before the filing of the petition, i. e. 30th July, 1950. Having been taken through the judgment of the lower court, I find that the said Court approached the case from a completely wrong angle and has recorded a perverse finding that since the appellant-wife had failed to establish her plea that she had been thrown out of the house with effect from 28th March, 1980, the ground pleaded by the respondent-husband stood established. The following observations in the lower court judgment clearly lend support to this conclusion of mine :- "A perusal of the entire evidence on record will show that the, respondent could not prove her allegations against the petitioner by believable evidence ................................................ Thus, for the reasons detailed above, the story put forward by the respondent that she was turned out of the house by the petitioner on 28-3-1980 i. e. on the following day when he took her from Sonepat his village, is not believable at all and does not appeal to the prudence of a reasonable man. Rather all this goes to prove that she left the house of the petitioner herself and that too on 15-2-1978 as stated by the petitioner." Rather the evidence on record read in the light of the attending circumstances clearly negatives the case of the petitioner-respondent. What has been pleaded as the solitary cause with the appellant-wife to leave his house and thereby for sake his company with an intention to bring her marital relationship with him to an end for all times to come is contained in para 5 of the petition and reads as follows : "That the respondent lived with the petitioner in the house of the petitioner up to 15-2-1978 on which date she left the petitioner saying that she can no longer live with the petitioner as the petitioner was too poor. He keeps her in a village and that the respondent would join service while living at her parental home. She also left the child to the care of the petitioner who feeling the absence of his mother died on 30-6-1979. The respondent has been saying even while she was staying with the petitioner in his house that the petitioner's parents were illiterate and rustic and did not know manners of living and that it was not possible for the respondent to live with the petitioner any longer." As against this, the case of the appellant in her written statement besides controverting the above noted allegations was that as a matter of fact the respondent (husband) and his family members including his mother and sisters were maltreating her on account of the inadequacy of the dowry she had brought to her in-laws' house and, thus, not reconciling with that they had thrown her out of the house, It was also pleaded that an additional factor for this misbehaviour towards her was that Inder Singh, elder brother of the respondent-husband, who had also forsaken his wife Rajpati and wanted to remarry was insistent that the appellant should arrange his marriage with her younger sister Ompati. According to her, even the parents of the respondent were party to this suggestion and since Ompati was married by her parents some where else it became too much for the respondent and his family members to tolerate. She also mentioned that even earlier in June, 1976 she had been turned out of the house but at that time her parents succeeded in prevailing upon the respondent to let her live in his house. According to her stand, she was brought back to the house of the respondent in January, 1977. As a result of this union ; she gave birth to a son in September, 1977 who ultimately died in June, 1979, in her absence as she had been made to leave the child in the parental house of the respondent.
(2.) Besides the evidence, the following circumstances too eloquently falsify the version pleaded by him.
(3.) Firstly, it is difficult to swallow that a girl who had been born and brought up in a village in an illiterate family would like to part company with her husband only on the ground that it was difficult for her to live in the village of the husband or that the village life and illiterate parents- in-law were in any way intolerable for her. Secondly, if the appellant had left the house of the respondent of her own accord and as suggested, in the absence of the respondent and his parents, why will she leave her infant son aged less than a year at the relevant time in the house of her in-laws and not carry him along with her ? Thirdly, even if the stand of the respondent-husband that the appellant was not interested in living away from him in a village with her parents and rather wanted to enjoy the city life where on occasions he was posted as a Constable is to accepted for argument's sake, then that by itself negatives one of the essential ingredients of 'desertion' i.e., the appellant wanted to repudiate the obligations of marriage and was willing to forsake his company without any cause.;