NEW DELHI: Discharging three high-ranking officials of Hindustan Unilever Ltd who were facing prosecution for abetment of suicide after one employee took his life on being demoted, Supreme Court said mere allegation of harassment of the deceased would not be sufficient and there must be such action on part of accused which left the deceased with no choice and such instigation must be in close proximity to the act of committing suicide.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said, “The ingredients to constitute an offence under Section 306 of IPC (abetment of suicide) would stand fulfilled if the suicide is committed by the deceased due to direct and alarming encouragement/incitement by the accused leaving no option but to commit suicide”.
It expressed disapproval over courts allowing prosecution under Section 306 without coming to prima facie finding about intention of the accused to compel the deceased to take the extreme step. “The test that the court should adopt in this type of cases is to make an endeavour to ascertain on the basis of materials on record whether there is anything to indicate even prima facie that accused intended the consequences of the act, i.e., suicide. The trend of courts is that such intention can be read into or gathered only after a full-fledged trial. The problem is that the courts just look into the factum of suicide. Such understanding on the part of the courts is wrong,” it said.
“…Courts should know how to apply the correct principles of law governing abetment of suicide to the facts on record. It is the inability on part of courts to understand and apply the correct principles of law to the cases, which leads to unnecessary prosecutions,” it said.
In this case the deceased had committed suicide in a hotel in Lucknow on the day he was demoted along with other employees. Quashing the case, the court said the extreme action of committing suicide could be on account of great disturbance to psychological imbalance either on the family front involving human sentiments or on the professional front where expectations to discharge the obligations and to receive considerations is regulated by law.
Referring to SC’s earlier ruling, the bench said if the person who committed suicide had been hypersensitive and the action of accused is otherwise not ordinarily expected to induce a person in similar circumstances to commit suicide, it may not be safe to hold the accused guilty of abetment of suicide.