Introduction:

In a significant ruling reinforcing the requirement of clear criminal intent in cases of alleged abetment of suicide, the Kerala High Court set aside an order framing charges under Sections 306 and 204 of the Indian Penal Code, holding that casual or angry utterances made in the heat of a quarrel, without the necessary mens rea, cannot be treated as instigation to commit suicide, and the judgment was delivered by Justice C. Pratheep Kumar while deciding a criminal revision petition filed by Safwan Adhur against the State of Kerala, challenging the order of the Sessions Court which had rejected his application for discharge and proposed to frame charges for abetment of suicide and destruction of evidence, and the case arose out of tragic circumstances involving the suicide of the second accused, with whom the petitioner was allegedly in a relationship, and the prosecution theory was that the petitioner’s words during a confrontation had pushed the deceased to take the extreme step, thereby making him criminally liable, but the High Court undertook a careful analysis of statutory provisions and binding precedents to determine whether the allegations, even if taken at face value, disclosed the essential ingredients of the offence of abetment of suicide, and the Court ultimately concluded that the legal threshold for criminal liability had not been met, emphasizing that criminal law cannot be stretched to cover every emotionally charged exchange between individuals unless it is accompanied by a clear intention to provoke or aid suicide.

Arguments:

According to the prosecution, the petitioner had been in an affair with the deceased, and when she came to know that he was about to marry another woman, she confronted him, during which the petitioner allegedly scolded her and told her to “go away and die,” and it was claimed that the deceased, being mentally disturbed by this encounter, subsequently committed suicide, and on this basis, the investigating agency alleged that the petitioner had abetted the commission of suicide under Section 306 IPC and had also committed an offence under Section 204 IPC for destruction of documents to prevent their production as evidence, and the Sessions Court, upon considering the materials, declined to discharge the petitioner and proposed to frame charges, prompting the revision petition before the High Court, and on behalf of the petitioner, it was argued that even if the prosecution story was accepted in its entirety, the essential ingredient of mens rea required for abetment was completely absent, and that the alleged words were spoken during a heated argument without any intention to instigate, provoke, or encourage the deceased to commit suicide, and therefore the continuation of criminal proceedings would amount to abuse of process of law, and reliance was placed on settled Supreme Court jurisprudence which consistently holds that mere abusive language, angry remarks, or emotional outbursts do not amount to instigation unless there is a clear intention to push the victim toward self-destruction, while the prosecution, on the other hand, maintained that the emotional vulnerability of the deceased and the timing of the suicide after the confrontation were sufficient to infer a causal link, and that the petitioner’s statement had mentally shattered the deceased, thereby constituting abetment, and it was argued that at the stage of framing of charge, a detailed evaluation of evidence was not required and only a prima facie case was sufficient to proceed to trial, and therefore the Sessions Court was justified in directing framing of charges.

Court’s Judgment:

The Kerala High Court undertook a detailed examination of Section 306 IPC, which penalizes abetment of suicide, and Section 107 IPC, which defines abetment as comprising instigation, conspiracy, or intentional aiding, and the Court emphasized that the concept of instigation necessarily involves a positive act accompanied by mens rea, that is, a guilty intention to provoke, incite, or encourage the commission of the act, and the Court observed that what is crucial is not the subjective feeling of the deceased but the objective intention of the accused, and unless the conduct of the accused is reasonably capable of being interpreted as intended to provoke suicide, criminal liability cannot arise, and the Court relied on authoritative Supreme Court judgments including Sanju Alias Sanjay Singh Sengar v. State of Madhya Pradesh and Swamy Prahaladdas v. State of Madhya Pradesh, where it was held that even telling someone “to go and die” during a quarrel does not by itself amount to instigation, as such words are often spoken in anger without any real intention that the person should actually end their life, and the Court also referred to Cyriac v. Sub-Inspector of Police, where it was clarified that abusive or humiliating conduct, even if morally blameworthy, does not amount to abetment unless it clearly reflects an intention to provoke suicide, and applying these principles to the facts of the case, the Court noted that the alleged statement was made in the midst of a wordy quarrel arising out of a personal dispute, and there was no material to suggest that the petitioner had any intention to drive the deceased to suicide or that he had engaged in any continuous course of conduct aimed at mentally torturing or pressurizing her to take the extreme step, and the Court categorically held that criminal law cannot punish impulsive or emotionally charged statements made during domestic or personal conflicts unless they are backed by deliberate intent to cause suicide, and therefore, the offence under Section 306 IPC was not made out even on a prima facie basis, and the Court further held that once the charge of abetment of suicide fails, the ancillary charge under Section 204 IPC relating to destruction of evidence also cannot survive, as it was entirely dependent on the main offence, and accordingly, the High Court set aside the Sessions Court order directing framing of charges and allowed the criminal revision petition, discharging the petitioner from all offences, and in doing so, the Court reaffirmed the principle that criminal prosecution must be founded on clear legal ingredients and not on emotional assumptions or moral outrage, and that courts must act as gatekeepers to prevent misuse of serious penal provisions in cases where the foundational requirements of the offence are absent.