1. The material facts, in short are that the petitioner and the respondent are Hindus. They were married about 25 years but have no child from their marriage. Their differences grew with the result that the appellant brought a petition under section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act alleging that the respondent was living in adultery with one Rajbahadur Singh (RW-2), that she started calling him (the petitioner) a "Pagal" and "Mehra" that she started persuading the petitioner to sell his agricultural lands to the said Rajbahadur Singh that she brought proceedings against the petitioner under sections 107 and 117 of the Code of Criminal Procedure followed by other proceedings under sections 325 and 147 of the Indian Penal Code and that she refused providing the petitioner with food compelling him to take refuge elsewhere.

2. The respondent challenged the petition on the grounds that it was the petitioner himself who had assaulted her on several occasions, that his imputation regarding her living in adultery was false, merely contrived as device to defame her, that the petitioner was bent upon wasting the ancestral property, a considerable part which he had already alienated without consideration or legal necessity at the instigation of one Dwarkaprasad, that the petitioner sometimes gets mentally sick and that it was the petitioner himself who after ill treating the respondent had at the instigation by those were interested in getting his property, gone away from the house depriving her of all means of her livelihood.

3. The learned District Judge finding that the petitioner had failed to prove either that the respondent had treated him with cruelty or that she was living in adultery with Rajbahadur Singh, dismissed, his suit with a direction for the parties to bear their own costs.

4. The first contention for the appellant is that the learned District Judge in the face of his having come to the conclusion that the respondent had called the appellant "Pagal" and "Mehra" ought to have held that the respondent had treated the appellant with cruelty.

5. I find that there is no force in this contention. Apart from the fact that under section 13 of the Hindu Marriage Act, the cruelty of the type alleged does not constitute a ground for the dissolution of a marriage by a decree of divorce, it constituting only a ground under section 10(1)(b) (where it has to be such cruelty as to cause a reasonable apprehension in the mind of that it will be harmful or injurious fro him to the other party), calling one a "Pagal" and "Mehra" on stray occasions-does not constitute cruelty. As is apparent from the evidence of Bhuwanmati (RW-3) the respondent, she had called him a "Pagal" only to protect the ancestral property falling in the clutches of buyers who according to her had paid no consideration and by their trickery were inducing her husband the petitioner to part with it completely. Similarly, the respondent calling her husband "Mehra" particularly in the context of the petitioner and the respondent having had no child in their long marital life extending to 25 years cannot be construed mental cruelty, at any rate such a cruelty as could raise a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the petitioner that it would be harmful or injurious for him to live with the respondent. In any event, the decree could not have claimed the relief of dissolution of the marriage by a decree or divorce on the count of the respondent calling him either a "Pagal" or "Mehra."

6. That takes me to the final contention for the appellant that there is evidence that the respondent was living in adultery.

7. I find that there is again no force in this contention. The charge of adultery is an easy one to make, but notoriously difficult to rebut. Strict, cogent and unimpeachable proof is, therefore, required to prove adultery. Then, under the terms of section 13(1)(i) of the Hindu Marriage Act a stray act of adultery would not suffice, the words employed imply that the p