A breakup does not amount to abetment to suicide unless a person actively instigated the other for the act, multiple Supreme Court judgements have laid out in the context of Section 306 of the Indian Penal code (IPC).
The debate over this has been reignited following the suicide of television actress Tunisha Sharma in Mumbai and the police arresting her former boyfriend Sheezan Mohammed Khan under Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of IPC. The offence is non-bailable and carries a sentence of up to 10 years in jail, if convicted.
The numbers
Section 306 is a very difficult charge to prove in court unless there is irrefutable and concrete evidence. The figures bear testimony.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report for 2021, there was only a 22.6% conviction rate under this offence and 8,312 cases under Section 306 were lodged last year.
The NCRB report also says that nearly 7,500 suicides were reported in India last year due to reasons of “love affairs”.
The Mumbai Police have not found any suicide note of Tunisha but have booked Khan on the basis of the complaint lodged by the deceased’s mother.
The mother said that Tunisha and Khan were in a relationship and had broken up around 15 days ago, causing stress to the actress.
Courts weighed in
The Supreme Court and various High Courts have repeatedly weighed in on such cases, citing the need for concrete proof to prove abetment to suicide. Except for cases of suicides due to dowry demands in marriage, it has proven difficult to achieve convictions here.
The Supreme Court has clearly said that “the person who is said to have abetted the commission of suicide must have played an active role by an act of instigation or by doing certain act to facilitate the commission of suicide”.
The court further defined Instigation as “to goad, urge forward, provoke, incite or encourage to do an act”.
The apex court has also impressed upon the need for scrupulous assessment of the evidence in order to find out whether the cruelty and harassment meted out to the victim had left the victim with no other alternative but to put an end to her life.
“Merely on the allegation of harassment without their being any positive action proximate to the time of occurrence on the part of the accused which led or compelled the person to commit suicide, conviction in terms of Section 306 is not sustainable,” the SC said in a judgement in 2010.
The essence of court observations in Section 306 cases has been that aborted love affairs can’t be construed as abetment to suicide charges.
Last year, the SC discharged a person from Section 306 charges after a girl took her own life following the allegation that he did not marry her following a love affair.
“Every person has a right to choose his better half for his life according to his wish and nobody can compel him/her to do things against his/her wishes. It seems that deceased was hyper sensitive girl and, therefore, she could not control her emotions, which she was having at the relevant point of time and took such a extreme step to end her life by committing suicide,” the SC observed in its judgement.
The apex court had underlined yet again that it needed to be proved that a person had harassed the deceased or played any direct or indirect act or instigation, as a consequence of which, the deceased was compelled to take the suicide route.
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