The main legal point established in the judgment is that a husband can be held criminally liable for breach of trust if he fails to return cash or gold belonging to his wife, as established in the case of Pratibha Rani v. Suraj Kumar (AIR 1985 S.C. 628).

1. This case reveals the story of distrust and acrimony between a well-to-do couple. They fell out with each other and the husband took another girl as his second wife without divorcing the first one, seeking legal justification under the personal law which governs them. But the first wife did not remain silent, as she launched the prosecution against the husband for criminal breach of trust of the cash and gold entrusted to him. The husband denied the allegations generally, but owned that there was entrustment of part of the claim and contended that he had accounted it to the wife. The trial court accepted his defence and acquitted him. Untired by the tribulations in prosecuting a long drawn out legal battle, and undeterred by the acquittal, the first wife has come to the High Court with this appeal for which she had obtained special leave.

2. At the time of their marriage in 1975, the accused (husband) was a House Surgeon at Alleppey and the appellant was a girl around sixteen who was the youngest daughter in an affluent family in north Malabar. Friends and relatives of the bride presented her with fabulous marriage gifts which included gold coins as well as gold ornaments. The appellant's case is that she had taken ornaments weighing 16 sovereigns for her daily use and entrusted the balance to her husband for safe custody. The young couple shifted their residence to the first floor of a nursing home building at Irikkur and two children were born to them. In 1980, the accused raised a claim that his wife's share in her mother's properties should be given to her. The dispute over that claim was finally settled on the mediation of Sri. P. Mustaffa, a senior Advocate of Cannanore. As per the settlement, cash for Rs. 10,500/ -and gold for 221/2 sovereigns were given to the accused as custodian of his wife's properties. The feud between the couple took shape when the appellant got reports of her husband's flirtations with some female nurses in his nursing home. It grew up steadily both belching acrid fumes at each other, and finally snowballed into the present litigation.

3. The complaint filed by the appellant mainly revealed the allegation that the gold entrusted to the accused in 1975 and the cash and gold entrusted to him in 1980 have not been returned to her as he had misappropriated them. The Chief Judicial Magistrate, who framed a charge for the offence under S.406 of the IPC, finally found that there is no reliable evidence to prove the entrustment of gold during the post marriage days, and that the gold and cash received by him in 1980 were returned to the appellant. The accused was acquitted on the strength of those findings.

4. Sri. C.K. Sivasankara Panicker, learned counsel for the appellant argued that the trial Magistrate has committed grave error in coming to those findings. Sri. M. Ratna Singh raised a legal point without prejudice to his other contentions on merits that a husband or wife spending the wealth belonging to either of them would not amount to criminal breach of trust since such spending could have been for the common needs of the family.

5. The majority judgment in Pratibha Rani v. Suraj Kumar (AIR 1985 S.C. 628) has settled the law that a husband is liable to be visited with penal consequences for breach of trust, if he fails to return the cash or gold ornaments belonging to his wife. Their Lordships had disapproved the earlier thinking that the only remedy of the wife in such situation is to resort to civil proceedings. The Supreme Court has also held in the same decision that mere entrustment of property of the wife to the husband does not attract any of the essential ingredients of the partnership or constitutes any co-ownership. The following observations of the Supreme Court are important:

"The mere factum of the husband and wife living together does not entitle either of them to commit a breach of criminal law and if one does then he/she will be liable for all the consequences of such br