Broken relationships don’t inherently amount to abetment of suicide: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Friday said that broken relationships, while emotionally difficult, do not necessarily amount to abetment of suicide unless there is evidence of intent to commit a criminal act.
A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Ujjal Bhuyan overturned the Karnataka High Court’s conviction of Kamaruddin Dastagir Sanadi, who had been sentenced to five years in prison for cheating and abetment of suicide under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which has now been replaced by Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
“This is a case of a broken relationship, not criminal conduct,” the court said in its judgement.
Sanadi had initially faced charges under Sections 417 (cheating), 306 (abetment of suicide), and 376 (rape) of the IPC. A trial court acquitted him of all charges, but the Karnataka High Court later convicted him on charges of cheating and abetment of suicide following an appeal by the state.
A 21-year-old woman, who had been in a relationship with Sanadi for eight years, died by suicide in August 2007. Her mother filed a police complaint, alleging that Sanadi had failed to honour his promise to marry her daughter.
Justice Mithal, in the 17-page judgement, examined the woman’s two dying declarations and noted that they contained no allegations of a physical relationship or any intentional act on Sanadi’s part that directly led to the suicide.
The court emphasised that emotional distress caused by a broken relationship does not automatically constitute a criminal offence. “Even in cases where the victim dies by suicide, which may be as a result of cruelty meted out to her, the courts have always held that discord and differences in domestic life are quite common in society,” the judgement was quoted by news agency PTI in its report.
The bench added that a conviction under Section 306 of the IPC requires evidence of guilty intent. “Surely, until and unless some guilty intention on the part of the accused is established, it is ordinarily not possible to convict him for an offence under Section 306 IPC,” the court said.