The Supreme Court has acquitted a man nearly 30 years after he was convicted in connection with his wife’s suicide, observing that the criminal justice process itself can sometimes become a form of punishment.
The man married in 1992, and according to the prosecution, he and his parents soon began demanding money to start a ration shop. On November 19, 1993, his wife consumed poison and died. The prosecution claimed that she took this step due to continuous harassment from her husband.
In 1998, a Karnal sessions court convicted him under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for abetment of suicide. The Punjab and Haryana High Court later upheld the conviction.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 306 IPC, there must be clear mens rea (criminal intent) and an active or direct act that led to the suicide. Mere harassment, the court said, is not enough to hold someone guilty of abetment.
A bench of Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice Manoj Misra stressed that courts must apply the law carefully in cases of suicide within seven years of marriage to avoid convictions based on moral grounds rather than legal evidence.
Citing Section 113A of the Evidence Act, the court said that a presumption of abetment should not be made unless cruelty is proven with strong evidence. Simply asking for money to start a business, without more, does not automatically amount to cruelty or harassment.
The bench also warned that courts should consider whether the victim was hypersensitive to ordinary disagreements or domestic disputes, which are common in married life, before concluding that such incidents drove them to suicide.
In this case, the court found no sufficient proof of cruelty or harassment. It took the Supreme Court less than 10 minutes to conclude that the man’s conviction was unsustainable in law.
Commenting on the long delay, the bench remarked:
“The ordeal for the appellant began in 1993 and is ending in 2024 — after nearly 30 years of suffering. This shows how our criminal justice system itself can sometimes be a punishment.”
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