Strained marital relations alone not enough to prove abetment of suicide: Supreme Court-OxBig News Network

Holding that a man can’t be convicted of abetting his wife’s suicide only on the basis of past quarrels and strained matrimonial relations, the Supreme Court has acquitted a man from Uttarakhand who was handed down a seven-year jail term for abetting his wife’s suicide.

“Merely because there was some dispute between the parties (husband and wife) by itself would not establish the act of abetment. Nothing has been brought on record to show that there was any direct link between the act of appellant and commission of suicide by the deceased,” a bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Aravind Kumar said, allowing the appeal of accused Ravindra Singh.

The case related to the death of a woman by burn injuries at her matrimonial home and the prosecution alleged that she had been deserted by her husband, who allegedly lived with another woman. The accused and the victim had quarrelled barely two days before her death.

Referring to a complaint she had written to the principal of the school her husband worked with and a police settlement, her family had accused Singh of abetting her suicide. The trial court convicted him in 2001 and the conviction was affirmed by the Uttarakhand High Court in 2013.

However, interpreting Section 306 of the IPC, the top court said, “A person who abets the commission of suicide must firstly, instigate any person to do that thing, i.e. instigate to commit suicide; or secondly, engages with one or more other person(s) in a conspiracy for doing that thing and an act or illegal omission takes place in pursuance to such conspiracy, and in order to the doing of that thing i.e. any act or illegal omission done towards conspiracy to abet the commission of suicide; or thirdly, if such person intentionally aids, by an act or illegal omission, the doing of that thing, i.e. does any act of illegal omission to aid the act of committing suicide.”

In its February 13 order, the bench said an offence of abetment (of suicide) involves mens rea to instigate or intentionally aid a person in doing a thing and it should be proved beyond reasonable doubt. It emphasised that a conviction under Section 306 of the IPC cannot rest on strained relations alone and must be backed by clear, proximate evidence of instigation.

The top court set aside the conviction saying “nothing has been brought on record to show that there was any direct link between the act of the appellant (Singh) and commission of suicide by the deceased”.