Partner not liable for abetment of suicide due to love failure: Delhi High Court

The Delhi High Court recently observed that if a lover commits suicide due to love failure, his partner cannot be held to have abetted the commission of suicide..Similarly, if a student commits suicide because of his poor performance in exams or a client commits suicide because his case is dismissed by the Court, the examiner or lawyer cannot be held guilty either, observed Justice Amit Mahajan. .“If a lover commits suicide due to love failure, if a student commits suicide because of his poor performance in the examination, 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,” the Court stressed..The Court made the observations while granting anticipatory bail to a man and a woman who were booked on charges of suicide abetment after a young man died by suicide. The woman was stated to have been in a relationship with the deceased man, who committed suicide after seeing the two accused together.It was alleged that the accused instigated the deceased by saying that they engaged in physical relations and would get married soon. They also allegedly told the deceased that he does not have "manhood abilities" and that he should commit suicide or else they would upload the images of his broken car window along with his photographs with the title “Jaisi Nalli Car vaisa Nalla *****”..After considering the case, Justice Mahajan observed that the WhatsApp chats placed on record showed that the deceased was a person of sensitive nature, who constantly threatened that he would die by suicide whenever the woman refused to talk to him.“It is correct that the deceased had written the name of the applicants in suicide note, but, in the opinion of this Court, there is nothing mentioned, as to the nature of threats in the alleged suicide note written by deceased of such an alarming proportion so as to drive a ‘normal person’ to contemplate suicide,” the Court noted.It further said that the allegation that the accused teased the deceased over the failure of his romantic relationship with the woman did not appear to be the kind of instigation that would amount to abetment of suicide in terms of Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).The Court proceeded to grant anticipatory bail to both the accused. .Advocate Vineet Jain appeared for the accused woman. Senior Advocate Maninder Singh along with advocates Arjun Sanjay, Aekta Vats and Simran Chaudhary represented the accused man.Additional Public Prosecutor Utkarsh represented the State.Advocate Urvashi Sharma appeared for the complainant (father of the deceased).