Burden of proof in proper approach.

1. In this matrimonial case, a husband accused his wife of living in adultery with her own foster father. He asked for a divorce on that ground. The trial court granted him a decree. But the district court in appeal reversed it. In this second appeal the same outrageous allegation is again made by the husband against his wife.

2. Fornication between a foster parent and his ward is not exactly incestuous. Yet it is too revolting to the human mind to be of frequent occurrence even in imagainative fiction. There is only one modern classic I know of in this genre: Nabakovs “Lolita“Lolita—by Vladimir Nabakov.But even in that literary masterpiece, the principal characters were quite abnormal. One was a self-confessed old reprobate; the other was a teasing teenage nymphet. Such an unholy combination must be extremely rare in real life, almost as infrequent as rank incest. I do not rule out cases where individuals may practise sex behind closed shutters, all the while masquerading outside under an assumed consanguinity. The possibility of such cases, or, rather, the prepossession in ones mind of their existence, might render difficult the task of distinguishing a genuine relationship from the bogus. But all this must only further underline the caution that we should not countenance charges of illicit sexual intercourse excepting on the basis of strict proof.

3. The trial court observed in this case that direct evidence of adultery is well-nigh impossible. So it is, with most murders too. But that does not mean that a court of law can grant a divorce for the mere asking, any more than it can send a man to the gallows on pure suspicion.

4. The husband in this case had made two bold assertions in his petition for divorce. One was that his wife was having sexual intercourse with her forester father. The other was that he himself had no sexual intercourse with her and a child born to her was not his, but the foster fathers. He went into the witness box and gave evidence to this effect. But his own letters addressed to his wife as well as his father-in-law clearly showed that not only did he sleep with his wife and made her with child but t hat he had discussed plans for her forthcoming seem an them. In the teeth of these letters he nevertheless had the temerity to tell the court that he was innocent of carnal knowledge of his wife and suspected that the child was not his. Both the trial court and the first appellate court rightly disbelieved this part of his evidence. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the trial court from holding, on the basis of what it recorded as the “general background of life between the parties” that the wife had c ommitted adultery with her foster father.

5. As to the family background there was hardly any dispute between the parties. The wifes foster parents were an aged childless Brahmin couple in Madurai. The foster mother was not in the best of health as she had innumerable abortions. The girl had come into their household in 1962 having lost her father, after her widowed mother had left her to reside with some relations. From her early teenage, the girl was living in the same house with her foster parents. It was the foster father who got this girl a teaching job in a local school at Madurai. It was he who came forward to arrange for her marriage. It was he who paid the dowry to the bridegroom and undertook the wedding expenses. The foster father was in his late fifties when the marriage took place.

6. The trial court, however, took into note of a letter produced by the husband at the trial which the court regarded as containing a confession by the wife that she was committing adultery with her foster father. This was an inland letter without a post mark, written in the hand of the wife. The husbands case was that the wife had written that letter and had sealed it and had given it for mailing, but he got it intercepted when a neighbours urchin was about to take it to the pillar box. The wife admitted