JUDGMENT :- The plaintiff Nasreen Zahra s suit for a declaration that she is unmarried and her marriage never took place with the defendant before the District Marriage Officer, Aligarh, was decreed by the 3rd Additional District Judge, by his judgment dated the 30th October, 1976. The defendant Altaf Hussain has filed this First Appeal.

2. The plaintiff s case briefly stated, is as follows : She belongs to a highly respected family of Aligarh. She is unmarried and lives with her father. She was studying in the B. A. (Final) Class in the Abdullah Girls College, Aligarh and had discontinued her studies for about a year. She was never married with the defendant nor she ever signed the marriage register in token of the marriage with the defendant. The latter was known to her father and was a friend of her sister s husband. Farhatullah Khan. The defendant wanted to blackmail her father by defaming him and her also. He had sent a paigham to her father with a mala fide motive and when told that the defendant did not deserve to be married with the plaintiff on account of family status and position the defendant had threatened her father with dire consequences. He was an uneducated person and belonged to a family whose status was considerably lower than that of the plaintiff s family. Shri Zia A. K. Sherwani approached her father on 15th Nov., 1974 and he had informed her father that the defendant had arranged to secure a Marriage Certificate through Shri Sudhakar Pachori, Advocate and Marriage Officer, Aligarh and had also shown him the alleged Marriage Certificate. It was a forged document and did not bear her signature. Shri Zia A K. Sherwani had also threatened her father that the plaintiff would be forcibly taken away by the defendant. The defendant and his friends had conspired together to cast reflections on her character and conduct and this had constituted a serious danger to her reputation and damage for any future prospects of befitting marriage.

3. Altaf Hussain in his written statement took the plea that the suit was not maintainable for two reasons, viz., the plaint was not properly signed and verified according to law and secondly, the court had no jurisdiction to try the suit or grant any relief as the plaintiff was the legally wedded wife of the defendant under the provisions of the Special Marriage Act, 1954. His case further was that the plaintiff was 23 years old and a person of mature mind and understanding and had of her own free will and consent delivered to the Marriage Officer a joint notice of intended marriage under the provisions of the Special Marriage Act on the 13th June, 1974. They had been married before the Marriage Officer, Aligarh, on the 23rd July, 1974 and in the presence of three respectable witnesses, viz., Mohammed Ali Khan, S. Ahmed Ali and Zia A. K. Sherwani. Their statements were recorded in the presence of the plaintiff and the defendant and they had also signed on the Marriage Register and on the three copies of the Marriage Certificate, The plaintiff and the defendant had also put their signatures on the same. The Marriage Officer had also made the requisite entries in the Marriage Register at serial No. 18. All the formalities of a legal marriage under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 had been done. The plaintiff had thereafter been pressurised by her father when she went to his house on 15th September, 1974. Her father had filed a complaint against the defendant in the court of Munsif-Magistrate Havali and it was dismissed on 14th April, 1975. A complaint by the defendant under S. 498, I. P. C. had also been dismissed by the same court on 23rd July, 1975. A revision filed against the above order is pending. The younger sister of the plaintiff, Neelofur alias Shahida, also got her marriage solemnised under the Special Marriage Act with one Shamshuddin Hussain on 12th April, 1975 before the Marriage Officer, Aligarh.

4. The trial court framed the following issues :-

1. Is the plaintiff legally

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