Girlfriend cannot be booked if man dies by suicide due to love failure: Chhattisgarh High Court

If a man dies by suicide due to love failure, his girlfriend cannot be booked for abetting his suicide, the Chhattisgarh High Court recently held..Single-judge Justice Parth Prateem Sahu said that if a student commits suicide because of his poor performance in exams or a litigant dies by suicide because his case was dismissed, the teacher or the lawyer concerned cannot be held responsible. "If a lover commits suicide due to love failure, if a student commits suicide because of his poor performance in exams, a client commits suicide because his case is dismissed, the lady, examiner, lawyer respectively cannot be held to have abetted the commission of suicide. For the wrong decision taken by a man of weak or frail mentality, another person cannot be blamed as having abetted his committing suicide," Justice Sahu held in the order passed on December 7. The Court, therefore, quashed the abetment of suicide charges against a 24-year-old woman and two of her brothers who were booked for the suicide of the woman's former lover. .As per the prosecution case, the deceased died by suicide in his house on January 23, 2023. He left behind a suicide note blaming the applicant-woman and her brothers. In his two page suicide note, the man alleged that he had a love affair with the woman for at least 8 years. However, she broke her relations with him and married another man. He further accused her brothers of threatening him from keeping relations with their sister and therefore, he took the extreme step. On a complaint filed by man's uncle, the Rajnandgaon Police arrested the trio and the District Court framed charges under Sections 306 (abetment to suicide) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against them, on October 13, 2023. The trio petitioned the High Court assailing this order by which the trial court framed charges against them.The prosecution relied upon the statements given by the man's friends, family members and relatives who stated that he was threatened by the woman's brothers and she had taken a loan from him and did not return the amount and instead broke up with him. .Justice Sahu, however, noted that there was no prima facie material available on record to prosecute the woman and others. Referring to the statements of the prosecution witnesses, the bench noted that the man had expressed his desire to commit suicide and the reason was 'betray in love, threats of dire consequences and false implication in a case.'"The deceased was under depression due to betrayal by applicant and as such he was compelled to take drastic step of committing suicide. However, these statements are not sufficient to conclude guilt, if any, of the applicants, firstly for the reason that version of all these witnesses is based on what the deceased told them. Secondly, they have not started that in their presence, the applicants instigated, conspired or provoked the deceased to commit suicide," the Court underscored.Thus, the oral evidence of witnesses was "hearsay" which was not sufficient to frame a charge against the applicants for abetment of suicide, the Court ruled. .Regarding the suicide note, the Court said that the nature of threats were not of such an alarming proportion so as to drive a 'normal person' to contemplate suicide."Most importantly, there is no mention when such threats were uttered, whether it was continuous of a single incident and whether it was much prior to the suicide or in close proximity when the suicide was committed. Further, if the deceased had felt annoyed and threatened, he might have lodged complaint with the police but he did not," the Court stated. It, therefore, underlined that the suicide letter only expressed a state of anguish of the deceased towards the woman due to her betrayal in love but it cannot be depicted as expressing intentional on the part of the applicants that the deceased might commit suicide. "In simple words, there is nothing in suicide letter to even suggest that the applicants have made such an atmosphere around the deceased that there was no option left for him but to commit suicide," the Court held. With these observations, the Court quashed the charges against the three accused and discharged them from the case. .Advocate Nitesh Jain appeared for the accused. Advocate GI Sharan represented the State.