The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of the term 'judicially separated' in the context of the Provident Fund Rules and its comparison with the provisions of the Divorce Act to determine the entitlement to the Provident Fund.

King, J.

1. The subject-matter of this appeal is the sum standing to the credit of one D.G. Chetty in Provident Fund. D.G. Chetty was a Government servant who died in the year 1937. In 1928, the present plaintiff, who is D.G. Chettys widow, filed a suit against him for separate maintenance and in May, 1929, was given a decree. In August 1929, D.G. Chetty made a fresh nomination under the rules of the Provident Fund by which he appointed the first defendant, his mistress, as the person entitled to receive the amount of the fund in case of his death.

2. The question before us is whether the plaintiff or the first defendant is entitled to this money, or to put it in other words, whether the nomination made by the subscriber in August, 1929, is a valid nomination under the rules or not. The learned Additional City Civil Judge has held that the nomination is valid and comes within the scope of Note 1 to Rule 17. Rule 17 deals with the disposition of a provident fund upon the death of a subscriber before retirement and| mentions the various contingencies which will arise. Under Note 1, it says that:

A husband may make a written application for the exclusion of his wife from participation under Clause (b), if she has been judicially separated from him....

3. The question before us can therefore once again be stated in this way : "Is a Hindu wife who has obtained a decree for separate maintenance judicially separated from her husband?" If she is judicially separated from him, it is conceded that the nomination in this case is within the powers of the depositor under the rule. If she has riot been, the effect of the Provident Fund Rules is to vest the whole of this fund in the plaintiff. The learned Additional City Civil Judge holds that the words "judicially separated" in this note must be given an extended meaning. In para. 32 in setting out the argument of the learned Advocate for the first defendant, he says that "judicially separated" has to be interpreted as "meaning and including the judicial recognition or adjudication of the right of a person to live separately from her spouse."

4. The learned City Civil Judge then goes on to point out various analogies between the position of a Hindu wife who has obtained a decree for separate maintenance and a Christian wife who has obtained a decree for judicial separation in the technical sense. We are emphatically of opinion that in arriving at the meaning of the words "judicially separated" we must take their technical meaning rather than a more popular and extended meaning unless there are very good reasons shown to the contrary from an analysis of the Provident Fund Rules themselves. The expression "judicial separation" and its cognate form "judicially separated" are not expressions to be found in ordinary language. They are expressions of the law with a distinct and exact technical meaning. It is impossible in technical language to speak of a Hindu wife or husband as being judicially separated from one another. No doubt, if the words were construed apart from their legal context, it might be possible to say that when a judge holds that a wife was justified in living apart from her husband, she has been separated from her husband by judicial action. But, as we say, there must be cogent reasons to compel us to adopt any such extended meaning for these words. When we examine the Provident Fund Rules as a whole, we are led to the irresistible conclusion that their main purpose is to preserve the rights of the family of the subscriber to receive his Provident Fund in the event of his untimely death. The word family is defined in the rules and of course includes the depositors wife. We think that there must be some strong reasons why a person who is still a member of the depositors family should be excluded from the benefit of these rules. According to the interpretation which the learned Advocate for the respondent would have us adopt, the plaintiff, although she has herself suffered il