Suicide abetment involves mental process of instigating person: HC

Tribune News Service

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, February 5

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a first information report in an abetment to suicide case after observing that vague and general allegations had been levelled in the FIR and the suicide note.

The High Court also made it clear that conviction could not be sustained in an abetment case without a positive act on part of the accused to instigate or aid the committing of suicide.

Active or direct act

There has to be a clear ‘mens rea’ to commit the offence in order to convict a person for abetment under Section 306. It also required an active or direct act, leading to suicide. —Justice Vikas Bahl

Justice Vikas Bahl also ruled that abetment to suicide involved a mental process of instigating a person or intentionally aiding him in doing a thing. Allowing the plea, Justice Bahl added the FIR and the suicide note’s perusal in the case in hand showed that no offence, much less under Section 306 of the IPC, was made out.

“Mere vague and general allegations have been levelled in the FIR as well as in the suicide note. No incident has been detailed so as to show that any of the petitioners had instigated the deceased to commit suicide. No active role has been attributed to any of the petitioners…The alleged suicide is stated to have been committed on July 30, 2017 whereas the complaint in the present case was filed on August 31, 2017, after a delay of more than a month,” Justice Bahl observed.

The assertion came in a case where the quashing of an FIR registered in September 2017 for abetment under Section 306, along with all other consequential proceedings, was sought on the basis of a compromise.

The FIR, pertaining to a matrimonial dispute, was registered after the petitioners’ son-in-law ended his life. Justice Bahl, during the course of hearing, was told that wife, mother and father of the deceased got their statements recorded before a lower court regarding the compromise.

Referring to a plethora of the High Court and the Supreme Court judgments, Justice Vikas Bahl added there has to be a clear “mens rea” to commit the offence in order to convict a person for abetment under Section 306. It also required an active or direct act, leading to suicide.

Justice Bahl added the High Court in a judgment quashed an FIR and subsequent proceedings with regard to the petitioners on the basis of a compromise in an abetment to suicide case after the settlement was found to be genuine and bonafide.

Justice Bahl referred to another judgment in which the High Court held it had power under Section 482 of the CrPC to allow the compounding of non-compoundable offence and quash the prosecution where the same was required to prevent the abuse of the process of law or to secure the ends of justice. This power of quashing was not confined to matrimonial disputes alone.

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