BABUI PANMATO KUER V/S RAM AGYA SINGH, AIR 1968 PAT. 190

INTRODUCTION

The Court while reiterating illustration (b) to Section 17 of the Contract Act, which defines fraud, observed that the father of the Appellant had resorted to active concealment of a fact, which was within his knowledge or belief, intending to indirectly procure the Appellant’s consent to marry the Respondent. The father had a duty towards her of making true disclosure of facts particularly with regard to the age of the proposed bridegroom.

FACTS OF THE CASE

• Babui Panmato Kuer, herein the Appellant, a little older than 18 years at the time of her marriage, overheard her father talking to her mother about fixing a husband for the Appellant, who is about 25-30 years old and financially well-off.
•  This conversation about her marriage was not objected to by her and she impliedly consented to the marriage. 
• The Appellant could not see the bridegroom, herein the Respondent at the time of marriage and even for a few days after that. The Respondent filed a complaint against the Appellant’s father under Section 498, Indian Penal Code after which she was brought to the house of the Respondent and she saw him for the first time. 
• When she discovered that the Respondent was over 60 years old, she insisted on being sent back to her father’s place. The Respondent thrashed her but she somehow managed to run away, firstly to her father’s house and then to her uncle’s house.
•  Thereupon, the Respondent filed another complaint against the Appellant’s father and her uncle under Section 498, IPC. He succeeded in finding her and confining her into a room.
•  She escaped again and thereafter filed a petition for dissolution of marriage on the ground of fraud committed to procure her consent to marry.

ISSUE OF THE CASE

Whether the Appellant was entitled for dissolution of marriage solemnized with the Respondent?

CONTENTIONS OF THE APPELLANT

• Fraudulent misrepresentation made to the Appellant by the father by employing the Appellant mother’s for the purpose.
• The marriage was not consummated between the parties.
• The respondent caused her physical pain and also did not provide her with food for two days.

CONTENTIONS OF RESPONDENT

Sometime in the early part of 1960, the respondent filed a criminal case against her father under Section 498, Indian Penal Code. Thereupon, her father, who had earlier declined to send the petitioner to the respondent’s house, agreed to her going there and the prosecution against him was withdrawn. On the 15th April, 1960, the father took her to the respondent’s house, where for the first time, in the night, she discovered that besides being a man of very ordinary means, the respondent was aged even more than her father, that is to say, over 60 years She wept and wept, took no food for two days and insisted upon being sent back to her father’s house, whereupon the respondent beat her. However, she later stealthily escaped to her father’s place, but the father chided her; and so she left his place as well and took shelter at her uncle’s place.

Thereupon, the defendant started another case under Section 498, Indian Penal Code, against her parents and uncle. However, the respondent succeeded in taking her to his house, where she was confined in a room. The petitioner again succeeded in escaping from the respondent’s house; and this time she took shelter in her nanihal. Ultimately, in March, 1961, the petitioner filed the present petition for dissolution of marriage with the respondent on the ground of fraud in the matter of procurement of her consent whereby her marriage was solemnized. According to the petitioner, she had no cohabitation with the respondent at all. The respondent appeared in the proceeding and filed a written statement denying the allegations contained in the petition, but he did not contest the petition at the time of hearing. 

JUDGEMENT

The Additional District Judge dismissed her petition for dissolution of marriage by stating that there was no direct misrepresentation to the plaintiff as the particulars of the bridegroom were not directly conveyed to plaintiff.

Secondly, misrepresentation under section 12(1)(c) of the Act is what to be made during the solemnization of the marriage and not earlier, when the negotiations for the marriage were going on.

The High Court in her opinion stated that the petitioner being sui juris, her consent to the marriage must have been taken directly. Even if the consent was not taken directly, the mother who was acting as the agent of the petitioner would have been provided with the true facts. The concealment of material facts from the mother amounts to the concealment or misrepresentation to the petitioner as dictating the particulars to mother be intended as dictating to the petitioner itself.

Moreover the High Court observed that the expression at the time of the marriage is found in clause (a) and (d) and not in clause(c). Therefore, it is clear that consent by fraud particular at the time of marriage is not necessary, but only the consent taken by fraud anytime before the solemnization constitutes the wrong under clause (c) of sub-section (1) of section 12 of the act.

Therefore the honorable High Court set aside the order of Additional District Judge and by the order annulled the petitioner’s marriage with the respondent. 

REFRENCE 

www.lawyersclubindia.com

This Article is written by Akshita Srivastava student of Lloyd Law College CCSU; Intern at Legal Vidhiya.

Admin