Ending relationship, blocking calls not abetment to suicide, says Rajasthan High Court

Merely ending a relationship and blocking a partner’s phone number doesn’t automatically constitute as an abetment to suicide, the Rajasthan High Court has said.

The judgment came from a bench of Justice Farjand Ali on September 25 while hearing a bail petition by a 37-year-old Jaipur man who is an accused in a suicide case and lodged at Jaipur Central Jail.

As per the case details, the accused had been in a relationship with a woman but the communication between the two had “substantially ceased, the accused having blocked the deceased’s telephone numbers, and that the deceased was aggrieved by the accused’s association with another woman.”

Shortly before dying, the woman had recorded several videos naming the man and holding him responsible for her actions.

Referring to the video, the court said, “… without expressing any final opinion upon the truthfulness, admissibility or evidentiary worth of the allegations, the immediate emotional narrative emerging from the material appears to be substantially centred around the deceased’s sense of rejection, abandonment and inability to reconcile herself with the cessation of the relationship and the accused’s association with another woman.”

Referring to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) section 108 for abetment of suicide, Justice Ali said that, “The mere fact that a person has committed suicide, and that the accused was in some manner connected with the deceased or that the deceased had grievances against him, does not, by itself, complete the juridical ingredients of abetment. The foundational requirement is the existence of an act amounting to abetment, which necessarily brings into consideration the concepts of instigation, intentional aiding and the requisite mens rea (or guilty mind).”

The HC said that the Supreme Court “has consistently held that the prosecution must disclose a positive, active and proximate act of instigation or intentional aid, and that such conduct must have the requisite nexus with the act of suicide.” It said, “The element of mens rea cannot merely be presumed from the unfortunate consequence of the deceased’s act; it has to emerge from the conduct attributed to the accused.”

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The court said, “In the present case, it is also relevant that the material collected during investigation does not, at this stage, disclose with sufficient clarity any particular contemporaneous act of the accused immediately preceding the occurrence whereby he expressly or otherwise intentionally provoked, incited or aided the deceased to commit suicide.”

‘People respond differently to rejection, separation’

The HC said people respond differently to rejection, separation, jealousy and the end of relationships. While such experiences may cause intense emotional distress, emotional suffering by itself does not constitute a criminal offence, it said. The court, therefore, must distinguish between understanding the psychological reasons behind a person’s actions and establishing legal criminal responsibility for those actions, it said.

Without recording any final opinion upon the merits of the prosecution case, and keeping in view the nature of the allegations, the material presently available, “the legal distinction between emotional causation and statutory abetment, the stage of the proceedings, and the fact that the appreciation of the evidentiary material is ultimately a matter for trial,” the court said that “a prima facie case warranting continued incarceration of the accused-petitioner is not found to be sufficiently made out for the purpose of deciding the present bail application.”

Moreover, there is a high probability that the trial may take considerable time to conclude, the court said, allowing the man’s bail, subject to a personal bond of Rs 50,000 with two sureties of Rs 25,000 each.

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Representing the accused, advocate Vibhuti Bhushan Sharma said that no case for the alleged offences is made out against the man and that his incarceration is not warranted.

Additionally, Sharma said that the man has been made an accused “based on conjectures and surmises.”