Madhya Pradesh High Court
Naina Gohar vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh on 16 March, 2020
Equivalent citations: AIRONLINE 2020 MP 1722
Author: Jagdish Prasad Gupta
Bench: Jagdish Prasad Gupta
1 CRR-4071-2019
The High Court Of Madhya Pradesh
CRR-4071-2019
(NAINA GOHAR AND OTHERS Vs THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH)
Jabalpur, Dated : 16-03-2020
Shri Kapil Sharma, Advocate for the applicants.
Shri J.S. Parihar, P.L. for the State.
Learned Panel Lawyer has produced case diary along with suicidal note
and report of hand writing expert.
With the consent of learned counsel for the parties, heard finally.
This revision petition under sections 397/401 of the Cr.P.C. has been
filed by the applicants against the order dated 06.05.2019 passed by 7th
Additional Sessions Judge, Bhopal in S.T. No.203/2019, whereby the charges
under section 306 of the IPC have been framed against the applicants.
Facts giving rise to this revision are that in the intervening night of
03.11.2017, Ishan Gohar husband of the applicant No.1 has committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence 447, Sharma Colony, Shahjahanbad, Bhopal and the suicide was committed on account of abetment caused by the applicants by continuous harassment and threatening to indulge him and his family members in false case of demand of dowry and harassment. About the incident, Crime No.199/2018 was registered at Police Station, Shahjahabad. During the investigation, a suicidal note was recovered from the house of the deceased and it was sent to the hand writing examination. According to the report, suicidal note was written by the deceased in which the deceased has written that his wife and her parents would be responsible for his death and on account of their harassment and threatening with regard to false implication in the case of demand of dowry and harassment, he committed suicide. After recording statement of other witnesses, charge sheet was filed and the learned trial Court has framed the charges under section 306 of the IPC.
On behalf of the applicants, it is submitted that in the charge sheet, there is no sufficient material to prosecute the applicants for commission of Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46 2 CRR-4071-2019 aforesaid offence. If the prosecution case be taken as it is, the applicants cannot be held guilty for abetment of suicide. Learned trial Court mechanically without application of mind has framed the charges, therefore, the impugned order is not sustainable.
Learned Panel Lawyer for the State has submitted that considering the suicidal note of the deceased and statements of family members of the deceased, it is crystal clear that the deceased committed suicide on account of harassment and threatening given by the applicants, therefore, they are responsible for the aforesaid offence. Learned trial Court has not committed any error in framing the aforesaid charge. Apart from it, at this stage, meticulous appreciation of evidence is not required. If, prima facie, sufficient material is available to prosecute the accused persons, the trial Court is bound to frame the charges. Hence, this revision has no merit, therefore, it may be dismissed.
After considering the contentions of learned counsel for the parties and on perusal of the suicidal note and statements of other witnesses namely Akash Gohar, cousin brother of the deceased, Ashish Gohar brother of the deceased, Kishore Kumar father of the deceased, Smt. Raja Beti mother of the deceased and Pawan Kumar brother of the deceased, it appears that the applicant No.1, who is wife of the deceased used to go in her parental house despite of resistance of the deceased and the applicant No.1 and her parents i.e. applicants No.2 and 3 used to intimidate the deceased to implicate falsely him and his family members in the case of demand of dowry and harassment and on account of demand of aforesaid harassment, the deceased committed suicide.
Prima facie, the aforesaid material established that the deceased committed suicide on account of the aforesaid reasons. In other words, on account of aforesaid act and intimidation of wife of the deceased, but for framing of charge of commission of offence under section 306 of the IPC, the trial Court has to see whether there is prima facie material to establish the Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46 3 CRR-4071-2019 fact that the applicants committed abetment to suicide, which is different concept.
The Hon'ble Apex Court in case of S.S. Chheena Vs. Vijay Kumar Mahajan and another, (2010) 12 SCC 190 has examined on ambit and scope of section 306 of the IPC and the relevant paras are 16 to 28 as under:-
"16. In order to properly comprehend the scope and ambit of Section 306 IPC, it is important to carefully examine the basic ingredients of Section 306 IPC. The said section is reproduced as under:-
"306. Abetment of suicide.--If any person commits suicide, whoever abets the commission of such suicide, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine."
17. The word "suicide" in itself is nowhere defined in the Penal Code, however its meaning and import is well known and requires no explanation. "Sui" means "self" and "cide" means "killing", thus implying an act of self-killing. In short, a person committing suicide must commit it by himself, irrespective of the means employed by him in achieving his object of killing himself.
18. Suicide by itself is not an offence under either English or Indian criminal law, though at one time it was a felony in England. In England, the former law was of the nature of being a deterrent to people as it provided penalties of two types:
7 Degradation of corpse of the deceased by burying it on the highway with a stake through its chest.
7 Forfeiture of property of the deceased by the State.
19. This penalty was later distilled down to merely not providing a full Christian burial, unless the deceased could be proved to be of unsound mind. However, currently there is no punishment for suicide after the enactment of the Suicide Act, 1961 which proclaims that the rule of law whereby it was a crime for a person to commit suicide has been abrogated.
20. In our country, while suicide in itself is not an offence, considering that the successful offender is beyond the reach of law, attempt to suicide is an offence under Section 309 IPC.
21. "Abetment" has been defined under Section 107 of the Code. We deem it appropriate to reproduce Section 107, which reads as under:
107. Abetment of a thing.--A person abets the doing of a thing, who--
First.--Instigates any person to do that thing; or Secondly.--Engages with one or more other person or persons in any conspiracy for the doing of that thing, if an act or illegal omission takes place in pursuance of Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46 4 CRR-4071-2019 that conspiracy, and in order to the doing of that thing; or Thirdly.--Intentionally aids, by any act or illegal omission, the doing of that thing."
Explanation 2 which has been inserted along with Section 107 reads as under:
"Explanation 2.--Whoever, either prior to or at the time of the commission of an act, does anything in order to facilitate the commission of that act, and thereby facilitates the commission thereof, is said to aid the doing of that act."
22. The learned counsel for the appellant has placed reliance on a judgment of this Court in Mahendra Singh v. State of M.P. 1995 Supp (3) SCC 731. In Mahendra Singh, the allegations levelled were as under: (SCC p. 731, para 1) "1. ... My mother-in-law and husband and sister-in- law (husband's elder brother's wife) harassed me. They beat me and abused me. My husband Mahendra wants to marry a second time. He has illicit connections with my sister-in-law. Because of these reasons and being harassed I want to die by burning."
23. The Court on the aforementioned allegations came to a definite conclusion that by no stretch the ingredients of abetment are attracted on the statement of the deceased. According to the appellant, the conviction of the appellant under Section 306 IPC merely on the basis of the aforementioned allegation of harassment of the deceased is unsustainable in law.
24. The learned counsel also placed reliance on another judgment of this Court in Ramesh Kumar v. State of Chhattisgarh (2001) 9 SCC
618. In this case, a three-Judge Bench of this Court had an occasion to deal with a case of a similar nature. In a dispute between the husband and wife, the appellant husband uttered "you are free to do whatever you wish and go wherever you like". Thereafter, the wife of the appellant Ramesh Kumar committed suicide. The Court in para 20 has examined different shades of the meaning of "instigation". Para 20 reads as under: (SCC p. 629) "20. Instigation is to goad, urge forward, provoke, incite or encourage to do `an act'. To satisfy the requirement of instigation though it is not necessary that actual words must be used to that effect or what constitutes instigation must necessarily and specifically be suggestive of the consequence. Yet a reasonable certainty to incite the consequence must be capable of being spelt out. The present one is not a case where the accused had by his acts or omission or by a continued course of conduct created such circumstances that the deceased was left with no other option except to commit suicide in which case an instigation may have been inferred. A word uttered in the fit of anger or emotion without intending the consequences to actually follow cannot be said to be instigation."
25. In this case, the court came to the conclusion that there is no evidence and material available on record wherefrom an inference of the appellant-accused having abetted commission of suicide by Seema may necessarily be drawn.
26. In State of West Bengal v. Orilal Jaiswal (1994) 1 SCC 73, this Court has cautioned that the court should be extremely careful in assessing the facts and circumstances of each case and the evidence adduced in the trial for the purpose of finding whether the cruelty meted out to the victim had in fact induced her to end the life by Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46 5 CRR-4071-2019 committing suicide. If it appears to the court that a victim committing suicide was hypersensitive 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 should not be satisfied for basing a finding that the accused charged of abetting the offence of suicide should be found guilty.
27. This Court in Chitresh Kumar Chopra v. State (Govt. of NCT of Delhi) (2009) 16 SCC 605 had an occasion to deal with this aspect of abetment. The Court dealt with the dictionary meaning of the words "instigation" and "goading". The Court opined that there should be intention to provoke, incite or encourage the doing of an act by the latter. Each person's suicidability pattern is different from the other. Each person has his own idea of self-esteem and self-respect. Therefore, it is impossible to lay down any straitjacket formula in dealing with such cases. Each case has to be decided on the basis of its own facts and circumstances.
28. Abetment involves a mental process of instigating a person or intentionally aiding a person in doing of a thing. Without a positive act on the part of the accused to instigate or aid in committing suicide, conviction cannot be sustained. The intention of the legislature and the ratio of the cases decided by this Court is clear that in order to convict a person under Section 306 IPC there has to be a clear mens rea to commit the offence. It also requires an active act or direct act which led the deceased to commit suicide seeing no option and that act must have been intended to push the deceased into such a position that he committed suicide."
In the aforesaid legal background, if fact of the present case is considered, it cannot be said that the applicants harassed the deceased or gave aforesaid alleged threat to the deceased with the view to induce him to end his life by committing suicide. The deceased committed suicide being hypersensitive to ordinary petulance, discord and differences in domestic life quite common to the society, which happens in our day to day life and on the aforesaid basis, the applicants cannot be held guilty for abetment of suicide. The nature of harassment and threatening was not of such level that the deceased had no alternative except to commit suicide. The deceased was an educated person and was doing service in the bank and never took any legal action to get rid of his problem and on account of hypersensitive feelings, unsafe and insulted, he committed suicide.
In view of the aforesaid analysis, this Court is of the considered opinion that the prosecution has failed to establish that prima facie, essential Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46 6 CRR-4071-2019 ingredients of abetment of suicide by the applicants and on account of missing of aforesaid ingredients, no charge with regard to commission of offence punishable under section 306 of the IPC can be framed and trial Court has committed legal error in framing the charge without considering the necessary ingredients of the offence, which is not present in the prosecution case.
In view of the aforesaid discussion, this revision is deserved to be allowed and it is hereby allowed. The impugned order is set aside. The applicants are discharged from the offence under section 306 of the IPC.
Copy of this order be sent to the trial Court for information.
(J. P. GUPTA) JUDGE pn Digitally signed by PANKAJ NAGLE Date: 18/03/2020 16:37:46