The court has the discretion to grant or deny a divorce, and may consider the possibility of reconciliation.

1. It has often been observed that people who break their marriages for one reason or the other, when re-arrange their lives again in marriage, become prone to break it a new. Yet no arrangement better than marriage has ever been known to the civilized world, be that a sacrament as the Hindus put it, or a holy union or contract as others describe it. The married state is the ideal state from the point of view of civilization, for it is therefrom that man and women better their physical mental intellectual and spiritual prospects and it is in that nest that future citizens of the world grow. But pitiable is the condition of such break-prone people if I may use the expression, for they identify themselves as a class apart. Yet, happily, emotional stability gradually comes to an exceptional few. Here in this matrimonial dispute is involved one such couple. Their causes are embodied in FAO No. 1-M and FAO No. 2-M of 1984 which shall stand disposed of by this common order.

2. Amarjit Paul Singh, the appellant-husband in both these appeals, is aggrieved in the first case against the order of the first matrimonial Court refusing to grant him divorce from his wife - Kiran Bala respondent on grounds of cruelty and desertion. He is also aggrieved in the other against the order of the said Court in refusing to grant him the custody of his minor son in exercise of powers under Sec.26 of the Hindu Marriage Act. At the time of the marriage, which was solemnized at Ludhiana on 16-12-1979, the husband was a widower, having three minor children from his first wife - two being males and one being a female. His first wife near-about 23-6-1977 committed suicide and her body was recovered from the Bhakra canal. There was a huge uproar in Patiala town by various organisations which led to the husband and his parents being prosecuted for offence under Ss.302/34, Penal Code. After trial they were acquitted on 31-5-1978. The State of Punjab preferred Criminal Appeal No. 1191 of 1978 before this Court which after admission was dismissed on merits by a Division Bench on 27-2-1981, of which I was a member. All these facts are available from that judgment produced in the case as Exhibit P-7. As is plain, within months of his acquittal, the husband married the wife respondent. Now she, on the other hand, was a divorcee, having married a man named Ravinder Kumar of Chandigarh. He successfully obtained a decree of restitution of conjugal rights against her which she did not comply. Later on the strength thereof, she obtained a decree of divorce against him and thus became free to marry. There was no child from that wedlock. Thus both the spouses came from broken marriages.

3. As averred by the husband-appellant in his petition under Sec.13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, they lived together at Patiala after 16-12-1979. It appears that the wife was at that time employed as a clerk in the P.W.D. (B and R) Department, Ludhiana, wherefrom she obtained transfer/re-employment, within a couple of months, in order to join him a Patiala. Then she became pregnant. Allegedly thereafter her behaviour with the husband became objectionable. Allegedly she started treating the children of the husband from his first wife with contempt and hate. She even beat them very often and when asked to desist from such behaviour by the husband or his parents she would misbehave with all of them. This was termed by the husband as a cruel behaviour of the wife, unbecoming of a woman, to be insulting, arrogant and disrespectful employing abusive language. It was also averred that she refused coitus to the appellant and this was another instance of cruelty. And lastly it was stated that she had left the house of the husband with the infant child on 26-7-1980 in his absence and without his consent, having deserted him without any sufficient cause.

4. The petition was initially filed on 24-9-1981 by the time when ground for Judicial separation had not ripened. An amended petition was late