Woman Can’t Be Held Accountable For Lover’s Suicide If Relationship Fails: High Court

New Delhi: In a significant observation, the Delhi High Court said that a woman can’t be held accountable for abetting the suicide of a man if he ends his life due to “love failure.”

The high court, while granting pre-arrest bail to a woman and her friend in an abetment of suicide case, said another person can’t be blamed for the wrong decision taken by a man of a “weak and frail” mentality, reported PTI.

“If a lover commits suicide due to love failure, if a student commits suicide because of his poor performance in the examination, a client commits suicide because his case is dismissed, the lady, examiner, lawyer, respectively. cannot be held to have abetted the commission of suicide,” Justice Amit Mahajan said.

The woman and her friend who received anticipatory bail allegedly instigated the man to commit suicide last year.

Following the man’s suicide, his father filed a complaint stating that the woman was in a romantic relationship with his son while the other accused was their common friend.

The bail applicants allegedly instigated the deceased by telling him that they had physical relations with each other and would soon get married.

The man’s body was found in his room by his mother, with a suicide note in which he said the reason of his committing suicide was the two bail applicants.

In its ruling, the high court said the deceased did mention names of the applicants in his suicide note, but it was of the opinion that there was nothing in the note to show that the threats were of such an alarming nature so as to drive a “normal person” to commit suicide.

“Prima facie, the alleged suicide note only expressed a state of anguish of the deceased towards the applicants, but it cannot be inferred that the applicants had any intention that led the deceased to commit suicide,” the court said.

The high court further said that prima facie from the WhatsApp chats placed on record, it appeared that the deceased was of sensitive nature and constantly threatened the woman that he would commit suicide whenever she refused to talk to him.

The court said that the purpose of custodial interrogation is to aid the investigation and is not punitive, but in this case it was not required, and hence anticipatory bail was granted.

The high court directed the applicants to join cooperate in the investigation.