The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said courts must remain very careful and vigilant in applying the correct principles of law governing the subject of abetment of suicide of a woman within seven years of marriage or it may give an impression that the conviction is not legal but rather moral.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra acquitted appellant Naresh Kumar in a case related to the suicide of his wife on November 19, 1993. The couple had married on May 10, 1992.
The bench expressed its anguish, saying the ordeal for the appellant, which started some time in 1993, came to the end in 2024, i.e. almost after a period of 30 years of suffering.
The bench said the criminal justice system of the country can itself be a punishment.
"It is exactly what has happened in this case. It did not take more than 10 minutes for this court to reach an inevitable conclusion that the conviction of the appellant convict for the offence punishable under Section 306 of the IPC is not sustainable under law," the bench said.
The court said due to the mere fact that the deceased committed suicide within a period of seven years of her marriage, the presumption under Section 113A of the Evidence Act would not automatically apply.
"The court should be extremely careful in assessing evidence under Section 113A for finding out if cruelty was meted out. If it transpires that a victim committing suicide was hyper sensitive to ordinary petulance, discord and differences in domestic life quite common to the society to which the victim belonged and such petulance, discord and differences were not expected to induce a similarly circumstanced individual in a given society to commit suicide, the conscience of the court would not be satisfied for holding that the accused charged of abetting the offence of suicide was guilty," the bench said.
The court also said it is now well settled that in order to convict a person under Section 306 of the IPC there has to be a clear mens rea to commit the offence.
"Mere harassment is not sufficient to hold an accused guilty of abetting the commission of suicide. It also requires an active act or direct act which led the deceased to commit suicide. The ingredient of mens rea cannot be assumed to be ostensibly present but has to be visible and conspicuous," the bench said.
In the absence of any cogent evidence of harassment or cruelty, an accused cannot be held guilty for the offence under Section 306 of IPC on the basis of presumption under Section 113A, the bench said.
In the case, the bench said the High Court as well as the trial court got enamoured by just three things, the deceased committed suicide within seven years of marriage, the accused was demanding money from the parents of the deceased for starting some business, and the deceased used to remain tense.
In the matters of the present type, the bench said in the case of accusations about abetment of suicide, the court should look for cogent and convincing proof of the act of incitement to the commission of suicide and such an offending action should be proximate to the time of occurrence.
"What ultimately led the deceased to take such a drastic step of committing suicide is not clear," the bench said, adding that oral evidence did not disclose any form of incessant cruelty or harassment on the part of the husband which would in ordinary circumstances drive the wife to commit suicide as if she was left with no other alternative.
"Mere demand of money from the wife or her parents for running a business without anything more would not constitute cruelty or harassment," the bench said.