PULLE J.-

This appeal relates to proceedings taken to administer the intestate estate of one V. S. Ramanathan who died on the 29th October, 1948. Two persons claiming to be the widows of the deceased applied for letters of administration. One of them Kamalambal alleged that she married the deceased in India on the 11th December, 1929. The other named Parupathy alleged that Kamalambal was not validly married and that she was the lawful widow by reason of her marriage to the deceased which was registered on the 3rd March, 1930, and solemnized according to Hindu rites in September of the same year. Kamalambal had four children by the deceased. Parupathy had none. The learned District Judge held Kamalambal as widow to be entitled to letters of administration. Parupathy has not appealed. The appellants before us are two intervenients who claimed shares in the estate as heirs on the basis that the deceased was lawfully married to Parupathy and died issueless.

The principal contest was whether Kamalambal had contracted a valid marriage with the deceased. If this question was answered in favour of Kamalambal it was argued both here and below that the decree entered in a suit brought by Parupathy in 1937 against the deceased for separation a mensa et thoro and the evidence given therein by Kamalambal precluded her and her children from maintaining that she was married to the deceased.

It may perhaps be convenient to deal first with the proceedings for judicial separation as they have a bearing both on the issue of fact as to whether Kamalambal was lawfully married to the deceased and on the issues of law as to the legal results flowing from the decree in that case.

In District Court Jaffna (Divorce) case No. 15 Parupathy alleged, among other things, that she was lawfully married to the deceased in 1930 and that thereafter he deserted her and, since May, 1931, lived in adultery with Kamalambal. She prayed for a decree for separation and alimony. The deceased admitted in his answer that he was lawfully married to Parupathy and counterclaimed a dissolution of the marriage on the ground of malicious desertion. In his evidence the deceased admitted that he was intimate with Kamalambal both before and after he was married to Parupathy. He denied having even gone through a ceremony of marriage with her. Kamalambal also gave evidence. She admitted sexual intimacy with the deceased but denied that she was married to him. On the 22nd December, 1939, a decree for separation was entered and it was affirmed in appeal in 1941.

The pleadings and the evidence given by the deceased and Kamalambal in the divorce proceedings raise, in my opinion, a strong presumption that they had not contracted a marriage in 1929. The question for determination is whether the evidence of their marriage given in the proceedings under appeal was such as to displace that presumption.

The evidence leaves no room for doubt that on the 11th December, 1929, Kamalambal and the deceased went through a ceremony of marriage in a place called the Heart of India Mission church at Bangalore. The evidence of Kamalambal on this point is corroborated by a retired minister of Church, one Rev. Paul Ratnasabapathy, who was one of the attesting witnesses. He has identified his own signature and that of the pastor who officiated which appear on the original of a certificate of marriage in the form prescribed by the Indian Christian Marriage Act, 1872. There was also produced an extract A2 from the register kept in the church purporting to be a certified copy of the registration of the marriage. Of the grounds taken in the petition of appeal one was that the evidence adduced to prove that the deceased became a Christian before his marriage was insufficient and the other that there was no proof that one Rev. K. Manickam who solemnized the marriage was authorized to do so under the Indian Christian Marriage Act. On both points there was oral evidence supporting Kamalambal which the learned Judge seem