Judgment

CHANDRACHUD, J.:- This is a matrimonial dispute arising out of a petition filed by the appellant for annulment of his marriage with the respondent or alternatively for divorce or for judicial separation. The annulment was sought on the ground of fraud, divorce on the ground of unsoundness of mind and judicial separation on the ground of cruelty.

2. The spouses possess high academic qualifications and each one claims a measure of social respectability and cultural sophistry. The evidence shows some traces of these. But of this there need be no doubt : the voluminous record which they have collectively built up in the case contains a fair reflection of their rancour and acrimony.

3. The appellant, Dr. Narayan Ganesh Dastane, passed his M.Sc. in Agriculture from the Poona University. He was sent by the Government of India to Australia in the Colombo Plan Scheme. He obtained his Doctorate in Irrigation Research from an Australian University and returned to India in April, 1955. He worked for about 3 years as an Agricultural Research Officer and in October, 1958 he left Poona to take charge of a new post as an Assistant Professor of Agronomy in the Post Graduate School, Pusa Institute, Delhi. At present he is said to be working on a foreign assignment. His father was a solicitor-cum-lawyer practising in Poona.

4. The respondent, Sucheta, comes from Nagpur but she spent her formative years mostly in Delhi. Her father was transferred to Delhi in 1949 as an Under Secretary in the Commerce Ministry of the Government of India and she came to Delhi along with the rest of the family. She passed her B.Sc. from the Delhi University in 1954 and spent a year in Japan where her father was attached to the Indian Embassy. After the rift in her marital relations, she obtained a Master s Degree in Social Work. She has done field work in Marriage Conciliation and Juvenile Delinquency. She is at present working in the Commerce and Industry Ministry, Delhi.

5. In April,1956 her parents arranged her marriage with the appellant. But before finalising the proposal, her father - B. R. Abhyankar - wrote two letters to the appellant s father saying in the first of these that the respondent "had a little misfortune before going to Japan in that she had a bad attack of sunstroke which affected her mental condition for sometime." In the Second letter which followed at an interval of two days, "cerebral malaria" was mentioned as an additional reason of the mental affectation. The letters stated that after a course of treatment at the Yeravada Mental Hospital, she was cured: "you find her as she is today". The respondent s father asked the appellant s father to discuss the matter if necessary, with the doctors of the Mental Hospital or with one Dr. P. L. Deshmukh a relative of the respondent s mother. The letter was written avowedly in order that the appellant and his people "should not be in the dark about an important episode" in the life of the respondent, which "fortunately, had ended happily".

6. Dr. Deshmukh confirmed what was stated in the letters and being content with his assurance, the appellant and his father made no enquiries with the Yervada Mental Hospital. The marriage was performed at Poona on May 13, 1956. The appellant was then 27 and the respondent 21 years of age.

7. They lived at Arbhavi in District Belgaum from June to October, 1956. On November 1, 1956 the appellant was transferred to Poona where the two lived together till 1958. During this period a girl named Shubha was born to them on March 11, 1957. The respondent delivered in Delhi where her parents lived and returned to Poona in June, 1957 after an absence, normal on such occasions, of about 5 months in October, 1958 the appellant took a job in the Pusa Institute of Delhi, On March 21, 1959 the Second daughter, Vibha, was born. The respondent delivered at Poona where the appellant s parents lived and returned to Delhi in August, 1959. Her parents were living at this time in Djakar