In a case of maintenance for a child born out of lawful wedlock, the onus lies on the mother to establish the paternity of the child, and the entries in the Vaccination Register, Birth Register of the Government Hospital, and Register of Births of the Municipality, which are made on the information of the mother, are not evidence of paternity.

JUDGMENT :

S. Acharya, J. - This revision arises out of an order u/s 488, Criminal P.C. directing the petitioner, the opposite party in the court below, to pay a monthly maintenance of Rs. 20/- to the opposite party, the petitioner in the Court below, for maintaining her female child.

2. The opposite party's allegations are as follows: The opposite party is a widow and was staying with her mother in Ganguliwari Sahi. The petitioner was an office peon in the court of the Munsif Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Parlakhemundi. On the request of the opposite party the petitioner arranged a job for her son in the Samasthanam office of the Maharaja of Parlakhemundi, and so the opposite party was obliged to the petitioner and he gradually developed intimacy with her and started visiting her in the house of her mother where she was at first residing. In course of time the petitioner indulged in sexual intercourse with the opposite party in the said house during the ab- sence of her mother, as a result of which the opposite party conceived through the petitioner.

After about six or seven months of her pregnancy, and when the said'fact was known to her mother, she drove the opposite party out from her house just prior to the car festival of the year 1966. The petitioner then came to her rescue, and kept her on the verandah of P.W. 4 for a day and then brought her to a house at Gujarathipetta, where she lived for a month. Thereafter the petitioner took her to a house in Golla Street. While living there she gave birth to a female child in the Maternity Ward of the Government Hospital.

She further alleged that it was the petitioner who was all along maintaining her ever since she was driven out from her mother's house; but just before a month of the delivery of the child the petitioner stopped coming to her, and never bothered to look after or pay any maintenance to her or to her child born through the petitioner. In the Vaccination Register, Ext. 1, and in the Birth Registers of the Hospital and Municipality. Exts. 2 and 2/1 respectively, the petitioner's name was entered as the father of the child born to the opposite party. On these averments, maintenance for the child, born to the opposite party, was claimed at Rs. 25/- per month.

3. The petitioner opposed the above petition for maintenance on the following grounds: He denied all the allegations excepting the fact that he had arranged a job for the son of the opposite party in the office of the Maharaja of Parlakhemundi. He denied having any complicity and/or intimacy with the opposite party, and specifically asserted that he never had any sexual intercourse with the opposite party at any time or arranged any accommodation for her at any place, as alleged by the opposite party. He also denied to have maintained the opposite party as any time.

4. On the above pleadings of the parties and the evidence on record, the court below ordered that Rs. 20/- per month is to be paid by the petitioner to the opposite party to maintain her female child.

5. Mr. Murty, the learned Counsel for the petitioner, seriously challenged the findings of the court below on the ground that on the evidence on record it has not at all been established that the petitioner is the father of the child born to the opposite party. It was also urged that the court below instead of casting the onus on the opposite party to prove that the petitioner was the father of the child, acted illegally in starting with an initial prejudice against the petitioner by presuming his complicity in the birth of the illegitimate child.

6. In this case seven witnesses were examined on behalf of the opposite party. Of these, P. Ws. 1 to 3 are witnesses to the relationship of the petitioner and the opposite party after she in advanced state of pregnancy was driven out by her mother from her house in Ganguliwari Sahi. The opposite party, on her own admission, was driven out of her mother's house when she had already conceived for more than seven months. P.