Rigby J:

delivering oral Judgment: This is a husband's undefended petition for divorce on the ground of the wife's desertion. The facts are as follows.

The parties were married in Penang on 22 March 1941, and lived in Penang after their marriage. Both the petitioner and the respondent are of the Tamil race. According to the petitioner, on 22 April exactly a month after their marriage, his wife told him that she was going out. She went out and never returned to the house again. He said that he made inquiries about her, but without success. He said that there had been no quarrel between them and he could not offer any explanation for her remarkable disappearance. In December 1941, the War in the Far East broke out. The petitioner said that after the War he again made inquiries about his wife, but without success. He admitted that he did not advertise in the papers, nor did he make any inquiries from the Police. Indeed, he admitted perfectly frankly and it was difficult for him to say anything otherwise - that he was not really anxious to find her. According to his evidence, he heard unconfirmed rumours that she was living with another man and had been seen both in Singapore and again in Kelantan. He did not know who the man was, nor was he apparently interested in any way in making inquiries. According to his evidence, in 1948, purely by chance be saw her walking down the road in Butterworth in the company of two children and another man. On inquiry, he found that the man was a Tamil Police Inspector with whom she was living. He asks me to believe that from the day she walked out of his house in 1941 until the day he saw her walking down the street at Butterworth in 1948 he never set eyes on her and knew nothing as to her whereabouts or as to the manner in which she was living. On that evidence he asked for a decree nisi. That is one side of the picture.

The petitioner has very properly filed a discretion statement in this case. From that statement it is apparent that in December 1944, during the War years, he met another woman, with whom he lived and by whom he had two children, whom he is now maintaining. In October 1948, he met another woman, with whom he lived and by whom he has a son, aged ten. He has continued to live with her since that date and says that he is now anxious to marry her.

Accepting for a moment as true the petitioner's story that a month after his marriage his wife walked out of the house without any reason or explanation, I find it extremely difficult to believe his evidence that he knew nothing of her whereabouts or manner of living until he saw her walking down the street with the Tamil Police Inspector and the two children some time in 1948.

I have found the case an extremely difficult one and adjourned the original hearing in order that I might have the assistance of the Attorney General. Mr. Massie, Senior Federal Counsel, who appeared for the Attorney General. It the resumed hearing today, informed me that the Police Inspector, with whom the respondent was admittedly and undeniably living, had been residing in Penang since 1945, with the exception of one year when he served in Butterworth, and that the respondent has borne the Police Inspector 12 children, of whom 11 are still alive. Mr. Lim Kean Siew, for the petitioner, accepted those facts as proved, but said that the petitioner had no knowledge of them. Indeed, it is, of course, the petitioner's case that he knew nothing as to the whereabouts of his wife, nor with whom or how she was living until he met her by chance in Butterworth in 1948.

The petitioner resides in Taiping. I repeat, I find his evidence extremely difficult to believe, and I find it impossible to believe that he did not know perfectly well that his wife was living with this Police Inspector, and that he had known that for a very considerable period of time before he instituted these proceedings. Unreasonable delay in the presentation of a petition is a statutory bar