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Synopsis

The Supreme Court on December 20, 2024, emphasised upon a consistent legal view that instigation or incitement on the part of the accused person is the gravamen of the offence of abetment to suicide.

However, in order to link the act of instigation to the act of suicide, the two occurrences must be in close proximity to each other so as to form a nexus or a chain, with the act of suicide by the deceased being a direct result of the act of instigation by the accused person, court added.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and K V Vishwanathan set aside the Bombay High Court's judgment of October 17, 2022, which dismissed a plea by Prakash and his family members in a case of abetment of suicide of Prakash's wife.

The bench pointed out that Section 306 of the IPC has two basic ingredients-first, an act of suicide by one person, and second, the abetment to the said act by another person.

In order to sustain a charge under Section 306 of the IPC, it must necessarily be proved that the accused person has contributed to the suicide by the deceased by some direct or indirect act. To prove such contribution or involvement, one of the three conditions outlined in Section 107 of the IPC has to be satisfied, court pointed out.

The court said Section 306 read with Section 107 of IPC, has been interpreted, time and again, and its principles are well established.

"To attract the offence of abetment to suicide, it is important to establish proof of direct or indirect acts of instigation or incitement of suicide by the accused, which must be in close proximity to the commission of suicide by the deceased. Such instigation or incitement should reveal a clear mens rea to abet the commission of suicide and should put the victim in such a position that he/she would have no other option but to commit suicide," it said.

The bench further said the law on abetment has been crystallised by a plethora of decisions of the top court.

"Abetment involves a mental process of instigating or intentionally aiding another person to do a particular thing. To bring a charge under Section 306 of the IPC, the act of abetment would require the positive act of instigating or intentionally aiding another person to commit suicide. Without such mens rea on the part of the accused person being apparent from the face of the record, a charge under the aforesaid Section cannot be sustained. Abetment also requires an active act, direct or indirect, on the part of the accused person which left the deceased with no other option but to commit suicide," the bench said.

The court also said that abetment also requires an active act or direct act which led the deceased to commit suicide seeing no other option and that act must have been intended to push the deceased into such a position that he committed suicide.

"However, this court has cautioned that since each person reacts differently to the same provocation depending on a variety of factors, it is impossible to lay down a straightjacket formula to deal with such cases. Therefore, every such case has to be decided on the basis of its own facts and circumstances," the bench said.

The court also said that it has been held that if the acts and deeds are only of such nature where the accused intended nothing more than harassment or a snap-show of anger, a particular case may fall short of the offence of abetment of suicide.

The bench pointed out that in another case, it was held even if one accepts the prosecution story that the appellant did tell the deceased ‘to go and die’, that itself does not constitute the ingredient of ‘instigation’.

In the case at hand, the appellant No 1 got married to the deceased on November 19, 2009. However, disputes arose thereafter, and the parties started residing separately from August 8, 2013 with the deceased residing at her paternal house with her child. A mahalokadalat was held at the court in Sangamner on February 17, 2015 during which the appellants were alleged to have refused to cohabitate with the deceased or accept her or her child at her matrimonial house or settle the proceedings initiated by the deceased. On March 20, 2015, the deceased committed suicide.

Taking the allegations in the FIR at face value, the bench noted, the incident at the mahalokadalat had occurred on February 17, 2015, while the deceased had committed suicide on March 20, 2015.

"There is a clear gap of over a month between the incident at the mahalokadalat and the commission of suicide. We, therefore, find that the courts below have erroneously accepted the prosecution story that the act of suicide by the deceased was a direct result of the words uttered by the appellants at the mahalokadalat," the bench said.

The appellants also vehemently argued before the trial court and the High Court that the mahalokadalat had not been held on February 17, 2015 but an year earlier and the date mentioned in the FIR was factually incorrect.

If this submission is to be accepted, the time gap between the two incidents would widen even further, the bench said.

"However, we do not wish to go into that issue. Even if we take the date of the mahalokadalat to be 17th February 2015 to be the factually correct one, there is enough gap between the two incidents to render the instigation or incitement by the appellants, nugatory. The cardinal principle of the subject matter at hand is that there must be a close proximity between the positive act of instigation by the accused person and the commission of suicide by the victim. The close proximity should be such as to create a clear nexus between the act of instigation and the act of suicide," the bench said.

The court also said the deceased had taken the words of the appellants seriously, a time gap between the two incidents would have given enough time to the deceased to think over and reflect on the matter. As such, a gap of over a month would be sufficient time to dissolve the nexus or the proximate link between the two acts, it pointed out.

Apart from this, the court also noted that there was no mention of any involvement of the appellants in the suicidal death of the deceased, lodged by her brother or about the incident that had occurred at the mahalokadalat which had put the deceased in a state of depression such that she frequently spoke about committing suicide.

"These facts are alleged for the first time in the FIR which was lodged five days after the incident," the bench said.

The bench concluded the prosecution had failed to prima facie establish that the appellants had any intention to instigate or aid or abet the deceased to commit suicide.

"No doubt that a young woman of 25 years has lost her life in an unfortunate incident. However, in the absence of sufficient material to show that the appellants had intended by their words to push the deceased into such a position that she was left with no other option but to commit suicide, continuation of criminal proceedings against the appellants would result in an abuse of process of law," the bench said, allowing the appeal and discharging the appellants.

Case Title: Prakash And Others Vs The State of Maharashtra And Another