Intent to drive a person to death must for abetment conviction: SC

New DELHI: A person cannot be accused of abetment of suicide if there is no conscious deliberate intention on their part to drive another person to suicidal death, no matter how harsh or severe the harassment they meted out, the Supreme Court said on Monday while upholding Bombay high court's decision to quash the abetment of suicide case over the death by suicide of former MP from Dadra and Nagar Haveli constituency Mohan Delkar.Delkar, a seven-time MP, died by suicide on Feb 22, 2021, leaving behind a suicide note which named persons, both in the administration and police, who he said had conspired to defame, degrade and demean him, to end his political career and ruin his social standing.But a bench of CJI B R Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran said the court could not place absolute reliance on the suicide note to initiate the proceedings in absence of any other evidence.

The court noted that police had still not grasped what constitutes abetment of suicide despite a slew of SC verdicts and "FIRs are registered, investigation carried out and for reason of abject ignorance or on tainted instigation or at times deliberate design, the alleged perpetrator is even taken into custody without examining the existence of mens rea (intention of accused)".Writing the judgment for the bench, Justice Chandran said that merely because the victim was continuously harassed and at one point, they succumbed to the extreme act of taking their life cannot by itself result in finding positive instigation that constitutes abetment and mens rea cannot be gleaned merely by what goes on in the mind of the victim.

"True, a person unable to bear the pressure or withstand a humiliation or unable to oppose, may succumb to the extreme act of ending his own life, in desperation; but that would not necessarily mean that the alleged perpetrator had an intention to lead the victim to eventual death by his own or her own hands," the bench said.It said many people stand up, some fight back, a few run away in the face of adversity and certain people crumble and, at times, take the extreme step of suicide.

"To put the blame on the pressure imposed and the person responsible for it, at all times, without something more to clearly discern an intention, would not be the proper application of the penal provisions under Section 306 (abetment)," the court said."The victim may have felt that there was no alternative or option, but to take his life, because of what another person did or said; which cannot lead to a finding of mens rea and resultant abetment on that other person.

What constitutes mens rea is the intention and purpose of the alleged perpetrator as discernible from the conscious acts or words and the attendant circumstances, which in all probability could lead to such an end.

The real intention of the accused and whether he intended by his action to at least possibly drive the victim to suicide, is the sure test. Did the thought of goading the victim to suicide occur in the mind of the accused or whether it can be inferred from the facts and circumstances arising in the case, as the true test of mens rea would depend on the facts of each case," it said.