This Letters Patent Appeal arises out of the suit Original Suit No. 66 of 1956 (Sub-Court, Nagercoil) filed by the respondent herein for restitution of conjugal rights. Her suit was decreed by the trial Court as prayed for and the present appellant preferred to this Court Appeal Suit No. 84 of 1958, which was dismissed by Jagadisan, J., The present appeal is by the defeated defendant.

The plaintiff’s case is she was married to the defendant in 1944, according to the custom and Hindu sastras when she was thirteen years old and the defendant was seventeen years old, that after she attained age her nuptial ceremony was celebrated in the house of the defendant, that she lived with the defendant for some time thereafter and that subsequently she was sent over to her parents’ house. Her further case is that thereafter she has been staying in her parents’ house and that despite repeated requests and all efforts on her part to join her husband and live with him, the latter has been evading to take her back giving all kinds of lame excuses. As all attempts on her part to join her husband proved futile she filed the the present suit.

The defendant, the appellant herein, resisted